


The Mysteries of Marcie Fleach:Chapter 5-Marcie Gras

by Sketchpad



Series: The Mysteries Of Marcie Fleach [5]
Category: Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated (TV 2010)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-02-09 19:31:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 37,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1995150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sketchpad/pseuds/Sketchpad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcie and her father visits Gatorsburg for the annual Pageant of Gators, a three-day carnival celebrating the gators' commercial bounty for the town. But someone is going out of their way to sabotage the festivities. Marcie must find the party-pooper before the whole town gets skinned!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Condensation rolled off of the stalagmites on the high vaulted ceiling of the cave and dripped down into the cave's natural, pond-sized pool, disturbing its surface slightly. It went unnoticed by the men below, who worked in and around the pool, which was surrounded by a strong fence for their protection and for ease of their particular work.

Muscular wranglers waded in the center of the pool, eyes alert and bodies tensed for any wayward movement under the water. The soft surface waves of curious motion that could suddenly lead to a deadly strike. These men were the highest paid by the company that owned these particular caves, the risks that took demand such payment, for these men, culled from some of the toughest areas of the Deep South, wrestled alligators for a living.

In the chamber's other surrounding, fenced-in pools, it was the same. Wranglers standing in the center of their pools, waiting.

However, activity was still happening while they waited. Men and women in water-proof jumpsuits and heavy gloves worked around railed loading areas set up near the fences' openings that led into the water.

Once the wranglers subdued the alligators with heavy tranquilizer darts, these "miners" then tagged the gators by which pool they were caught and then loaded onto mine car trains to be brought out for further processing.

In one of the pools, a ripple was seen, and the wranglers were set. Coordination with each other and the shooter was critical. Too many workers lost limbs to show for their hard work, or sadly left loved ones behind as they were dragged down and death-rolled into manageable chunks.

Slitted eyes and flared nostrils quietly broke the surface of the pool. The gator was cautious but curious. So many men to choose from, but numbers also meant security. They could hurt it if they worked together, somehow.

It submerged and thought of its options, then came up with one that its reptilian brain would agree with. Scanning the water, it judged the distance of the men and noticed the legs of one that stood further out than the others. The further in water one was, the deeper into the gator's territory one was, and deep water was the reptile's kingdom.

On top of that, it could smell something in the depths near the standing man, an aroma of dead animal that drew the alligator closer, almost in striking range. Whatever that man was exposed to, it may very well spell the end of him, if he wasn't aware.

The gator's snout took one more whiff of the carcass scent near the man's pant leg, and then he struck, hard, twisting its head to take a herculean bite from its victim and yank him off-balance into the water.

The man made no sound as he was pulled down, so sudden was the attack. The other wranglers, however, didn't move in to pulled him back out, they simply spread out, each holding a section of a wide net into a rough perimeter behind the gator, with the shooter moving forward into position.

It didn't take them long to see what they were waiting for. The infamous death-roll.

Since all crocodilians can't chew their food, they had come up with an ingenious way to make devouring prey easier over the eons of their evolutionary development. By biting a section of the body and then rolling with that chunk of flesh and bone at high speed, they could effectively rip pieces off and eat them at their leisure. Such was the fate of the fallen wrangler.

The shooter quickly lined up her shot, seeing down the sight of her air rifle, and keeping her nerves, eyes and hands steady. She would only get one clear shot at this.

The gator, in the midst of his rolling, met with some resistance from its prey, and momentarily stopped spinning at the worst possible moment, which was when the shooter finally saw her target, the softer, whitish belly of the beast, exposed for all to see.

With a controlled trigger squeeze, the dart was launched into the unarmored stomach, which made the alligator release its food in pain, and splash in confusion.

That was the wranglers' cue. They all cast their wide net over the reptile, allowing its frantic movements of muscular tail, foot and body to help entangle it.

The shooter loaded another dart into the rifle and lined up another shot. The dart's needles were rated to penetrate even the natural armor of an American alligator, but glancing blows during a capture had been known to occur, so she learned to be cautious.

Her finger slipped around the sensitive trigger, ready to pull the fractional ounce of pressure needed to launch another dart, but it soon proved unnecessary.

The hissing gator's tail whips and open-mouth aggression became noticeably slower, its swimming and splashing, more sedate. So much so, that the wranglers, as if of one, practiced mind, decided that it was safe enough to capture, carefully grabbed the ends of the net, and hauled the animal to the loading area, where miners who were watching the scene, waited.

As for the stricken worker whose leg was nearly ripped apart by the alligator, he floated up to the surface of the water. Aside from shredded trousers, there wasn't a drop of arterial blood in the pool. In fact, under closer observation, it could be safely said that the worker wasn't even human.

"Good placement of the bait dummy, guys," the lead wrangler said to his team. "He didn't know what hit 'im."

Two miners hauled the animal over to a prep table and worked over the captured beast, one tightly securing its mouth closed with electrical tape, and the other pinning a tag, with the number of that pool, number three, into one of the plates on its back. Once that was done, they both heaved and dropped the gator into a waiting mine car that was already filled with other comatose alligators pulled from the body of water, their great tails hanging impotently out of the car.

"Okay, Lou, take 'em out," called out Miner #1 to the mine car engineer, who started his engine and hauled the small train of mine cars out of the pool chamber and towards the mine's exit. After he wiped the prep table clean of water and gator essence, he spoke to his friend, Miner #2.

"Can't wait 'til quittin' time," he told him. "Gotta get my costume ready for the Pageant. This year, I'm going for a really cool look this year. I'm going as Pretre du Marais."

Miner #2 scoffed. "That ol' storybook character? Good luck getting any of the girls to talk to you looking like that."

"Hey! I'm appealing to the ladies' inner need for security with this," Miner #1 explained, cockily. "It's like takin' a trip through the tunnel of love. They love to be scared so they can have somebody to cling to. Basic Love Psychology."

So focused were they on their conversation, neither of them noticed the mine's foreman marching up behind the two of them, after overhearing them.

"Hey, you two!" he barked. "How about a trip through the tunnel of _gators_ , instead! The boss is really crackin' down on low productivity. We've gotta make up our quota this quarter."

"Hey, boss," Miner #2 asked, jovially. "If four quarters make a dollar, how much is four quotas?"

"I don't know, Miller," the foreman admitted. "Maybe you can call me from the unemployment office and tell me, ya knucklehead. Now, no more loafing!" Satisfied that he got his point across, the foreman stomped off, heading for the chamber exit.

Chaffing from the scolding, Miner #2 whispered to #1, "I'll show him loafing. I'll bet we'd get more gators outta this mine if we use better bait." He gave a meaningful glance at the foreman's general direction.

Miner #1, chuckling, said, "Now you know we have to have the highest quality gators coming out of here. What'll you think'll happen if we feed him to the gators...and the gators get sick?"

Both gave a well-needed laugh from that, and were seeing the wranglers and shooter head back out into the water again, when a voice was heard echoing across the stone walls of the cave.

"Good point," the voice said, which betrayed French origins with a soft sibilance. "We could always try you."

They stop laughing and then they, and indeed, every other worker looked around for the speaker. The cave's interior lighting flickered for a moment, and then someone resembling a shaman, quietly appeared from a green cloud bank of smoke that filled the mouth of the chamber.

The foreman, being the closest to the exit, gasped in sudden fright at the stranger's appearance, recovered, and then, angrily, walked up to engage the unexpected guest.

The visitor was chalk-white, thin, almost lanky, and dressed in what looked like the tattered, weather-beaten remnants of a Catholic priest's robes, held closed with a length of rope that supported a series of gourds. In one of his bony, dirty-nailed, claw-like hands, he brandished a long, moss-covered wooden staff, adorned with beadwork that held feathers, a coin, and a small rodent's skull.

Shuffling on barely held together sandals, the visitor walked further into the chamber as the foreman approached, but the foreman wouldn't know what this person thought of him via expression, because the guest's head and face was masked under a huge, weathered alligator skull that was ornamented from behind by a full plumage of red-tipped, white feathers.

The shaman regarded the irate man, seeing him through the alligator skull's eye sockets. However, to the foreman's discomfort, those sockets glowed with a verdant, intimidating light.

Nevertheless, the foreman stood his ground, staring hard into the glowing eyes. "Hey, you're not allowed in here. If you want to play dress up, wait until the pageant's in full swing and then knock yourself out. In the meantime, get outta here!"

Miner #1, not appreciating some joker interrupting their work time, especially one dressed as he was, chimed in. "You tell him, boss. Besides, he stole my costume idea."

The ragged intruder ignored the worker, but spoke loud enough so that everyone got the message.

"The insult zat iz your pageant and your crimes against ze noble gator will end soon enough, mes amis," the stranger hissed with malevolent promise. "In ze meantime, the Ghosts of Gators Past will educate you on ze folly of your ways!"

The man took one of the gourds from his rope belt and poured some soft, greenish powder in his pale hand, then, without preamble, he threw it into the foreman's face.

The foreman coughed quietly in the small cloud that was created, just as the powder formed a faint green mask on his face. A face that twisted in annoyance and anger.

"Oh, you like to throw things, huh?" the mine boss asked, balling up his work-worn fists. "Well, watch how I throw a punch."

A fist flew, but before it could connect satisfactorily with his attacker's skull-covered face, something seen drew the foreman's attention, and the fist stopped short of the target.

Suddenly, impossibly, flowing from the ground and slipping through the solid walls of the cave were the dark phantoms of hungry, angry alligators, snapping, hissing, growling, and lunging at him.

The foreman wanted to stay, to kick this fool out of their mine, to be the leader he was hired to be, but he was soon having trouble. He tried to make his mind rationalize what he was seeing, but the longer he stood there watching these ghostly predators approach, the more his brain told him to run...run from the cave in a screaming panic.

And so, he did just that.

Seeing the unlikely, and to some workers, the impossible, just occur, the miners took immediate issue with this man. As one, they all stopped working, and together, rushed at him, in vengeance of their boss.

"Ghosts of Gators Past, come to my aid. Your champion calls you!" the ragged man called to the ceiling of the cave.

Incredibly, the miners and wranglers began to slow and stopped their running, in confused groups. Their solidarity dying as fast as they feared _they_ would, when the workers, all of them, began seeing ghost gators crawling quickly towards them, jaws open for an eager and fatal crunch.

Some miners fell to the ground, apparently not quick enough to evade the otherworldly reptiles, and struggled in desperate, pitched battles with their invisible opponents.

Miner #2, rolling on the ground and dodging the jaws of his attacker, turned his head around at the proper moment to see their tormentor laughing loud and free at the chaos.

Focused, he managed to twist away from his ghost and got up, saw his friend, Miner #1 on his back, struggling, and ran to him.

He pulled #1 to his feet and ran with him towards the exit. From Miner #2's horrified brain, he had no other explanation for all of this, save one.

"It can't be!" he howled to his friend, in disbelief. "It really _is_ Pretre du Marais!"

The throng of miners and wranglers all swerved to avoid otherwise unseeable animals coming at them, but eventually, they all ran, pell-mell, for the daylight, in primal terror from these spirit saurians, the peals of cruel laughter following in their terrified wake.

"Tell your masters," Pretre du Marais crowed, his words echoing from the cave. "That the Age of the Gator has come!"

* * *

Winslow Fleach's decades-old, four-door sedan wound through the road outside of Crystal Cove that late Friday afternoon.

He was proud of the fact that his car's continued service through the years was made possible due to his good and steady stewardship. Other people would have bought another car as soon as the windshield wipers failed, but not him. Proper maintainance not only made him appreciate his car more, but it saved him money, in the long run. The spendthrifts of the world could take a lesson in that, he thought, as he made another turn on the road.

Marcie just looked out from the open front passenger window, thinking about who the mystery man was, as the pines of California went by.

It felt like the longest couple of weeks Marcie ever endured, waiting for an attack that she felt was sure to come. Looking over her shoulders in school, at work at the park, and even at home, on occasion, it was a stressful hell that she debated telling her father about. But in all of that time, nothing had happened. No letters, no clues, no strangers asking for directions, only to take her into a dark alley and end her days. Nothing.

So, she was more than willing to go on what looked like a short vacation with her father, if only to get out of town for the weekend.

"I'd like to think that I inherited my strong sense of work ethic from you, Dad," Marcie said, watching the scenery go by. "But only you would take one of the few times you'd actually go on vacation, and turn it into some sort of busman's holiday."

Winslow gave an bemused smile at that. "Ah, you say that now, but _Fleach's Folly Factory_ is going to be even more festive than ever when I learn how Gatorsburg plans its Pageant of Gators celebration. Think of it, Marcie. A night time carnival every night. We'll call it "Sundown Celebration." Lights, music, a small parade with beautiful floats going through the park. It's genius. Anybody can have roller-coasters, but how many parks will have a nightly carnival event like ours?"

Marcie gave a wan smile at his infectious determination. She realized long ago that their family's amusement park was, if anything, a work in progress for him. There was always something more to add or change to make it better, and once he knew that neighboring Gatorsburg was having its yearly celebration, Winslow knew he had to come.

"Well, it's ambitious, I'll give you that, Dad," Marcie said, supportively.

"Well, Marcie, it's like I always said," her father reminded her, which was often in her life. "If it's not ambitious, it's not worth doing. Don't worry, it'll be great."

* * *

No citizen living would have believed that their beloved Gatorsburg had once been a played-out husk, a land of dead mines and even more dead dreams, a sepulchral ghost town in another, more darker time.

Under a perpetually cloudy sky, fog-choked, dead tree-lined streets played solemn host to dark, useless, empty buildings that smelled of wet rust, peeling paint, the past, and hopelessness.

With the death of the Evil Entity, Gatorsburg had been transformed. A town that had long since rotted and carried the presence of death in its bones, was now vibrant and active again. Where lonely streets once meandered, people now bustled along its clean, hilly thoroughfares and cobblestone walks. Businesses that had once been decrepit and defunct, were now profitable, self-sufficient enterprises that catered to a satisfied public.

It wasn't too long afterwards that The Fleachs' sedan finished the three-mile drive to the town, drove past the billboard proclaiming "Welcome to Gatorsburg. Population: 30,000," and entered the town's city limits.

The sedan cruised through the avenue, allowing father and daughter to take in the local sights. Essentially, Gatorsburg's city plan was based on earlier maps that were, in fact, based on a local newspaper's humorous picture and article jabbing fun at the town's history in the 1800's, depicting a sleeping alligator, surrounded by some pine-covered mountains and wetlands, curled up in an almost spiral shape. Proud city planners took inspiration from the joke and created what would come to be the quarters of modern Gatorsburg.

At the moment, they were moving through the entrance of town, its oldest and outermost section, the _Tail Quarter_ , marked by its Creole Townhouses and their Spanish moss-covered balconies, that shared their city blocks with other homes and business concerns.

Jutting out from the Tail Quarter was, like the illustrated gator's back right leg, was the poorer neighborhoods of the _Right Hind Quarter_ , called simply, _Right Hind_ , by the folks, therein, composed of its sprinkling of California Bungalow-style houses, tight, orderly blocks of even older Shotgun Houses, and the odd empty lot or two.

Angling out from the other side of the Tail Quarter, in the same orientation as the inward-pointing rear left leg, was the industrial neighborhoods of the _Left Hind Quarter_.

On what would be the gator's curving body was the _Middle Quarter_ , holding the schools, small businesses and suburban residential blocks of Double-Gallery Houses and Creole Cottages that served the upper-middle and middle class citizens of town. Along the quarter's outer edge stood the wide highlands of cemeteries and the various mansions, some owned and some abandoned, that housed the town's old money.

The more affluent business center of town was the gator's broad head, and was, therefore, called the _Head Quarter_. It was said, with some jocularity and perhaps more than a little truth, that the businesspeople there, were like the typical alligator, the most aggressive, the most hungry for success.

"Blast it all," Winslow swore while he waited for his light to turn green, looking from one side of the street to the other. "We need a map to find the hotel we're staying in."

"We passed a gas station on the way over here," Marcie advised him. "Why don't we just turn back and get one there?"

"Good idea."

The light turned green and Winslow was about to take a side street to turn around and return to the fill-up station, when Marcie spoke up.

"Hold on, Dad. Let's pull into that restaurant, and I'll ask for directions. It's quicker," she said.

Her father looked to where she gestured and saw, on the corner of the side street, a retro-styled diner with the name "Gator Burger" proudly elevated on the roof in green neon. Lounging against the restaurant's exterior mascot, a smiling, cartoonishly-designed alligator, was a waitress, on break, sipping a soda.

"All right," Winslow said, pulling up to the curb in front of the eatery.

Marcie leaned her head out of the front passenger window and called out to the sipping waitress. "Excuse me, ma'am. We're trying to get to the Dancing Gator Hotel on 1 Hill Street. Do you know where that is?"

"Well, you're on Hill, now," the waitress pointed out in the town's local Southern drawl. "The hotel's way up the street, at the end."

The woman pointed in that direction. In the distance, the street, eventually, rose up the side of a tall hill, and sitting on its peak was a hotel, or what looked like one from Marcie's reckoning.

Marcie looked over at another Creole Townhouse that sat next door to the diner. Judging from the descending street numbers on the buildings next to Gator Burger, it appeared that the top of hill was the beginning of the street, as well as the inspiration for its name.

"Thank you," Marcie said to her, and soon the duo drove off.

The waitress heard them drive further and further away, and then said, dismissively, under her breath, "Tourists."

The Dancing Gator Hotel, formerly the Drowsy Gator, sat on the same hill that it had in its previous life. The surrounding dead trees that looked like black, skeletal hands rising from the property, were replaced by a quaint copse of magnolias that lined the ascending path towards the edifice.

From its geographic perch, the hotel gave commanding views of the bustling streets below, and its elevation afforded the patrons some peace and quiet from those same streets, behind the shelter of the flowering trees.

Driving past the lone Creole Cottage at the hill's base, the sedan gradually wound its way up the small, tree-lined path, until the grade finally leveled off, and they reached the small parking lot set off to the side of the hotel's flowered walkway.

Soon after, Winslow and his daughter disembarked from the car, each with a shoulder bag filled with, for him, toiletries, stationary, and a change of clothes, and for her, the same, except for the addition of a miniature chemistry set, and walked up to the front doors of the Victorian-style hotel.

The ringing bell over the opening doors signaled the front desk of Marcie and her father's arrival.

Dappled sunlight softly illuminated the foyer as Marcie and Winslow walked in. The lobby was wide, tastefully appointed in antique furniture, and beautifully gothic in its Victoriana. Even with its carved alligator heads on the newels of the winding staircase's banister and elsewhere, it still felt inviting, if a little odd. It felt to Marcie as though she was walking through an old hunting lodge.

The duo walked by the lounge and its fireplace, then approached the front desk, where a thin, pale man with dark hair obscuring one side of his angular face, met them with what looked like a predatory smile. On the lapel of his suit was a brilliant pin that proclaimed that his name was Gunther Gator, General Manager.

"Hello, there," Gunther greeted the two. "Welcome to the Danccing Gator Hotel. My name iss Gunther Gator. How may I help you?"

Marcie could swear there was something of a hiss in the back of his words.

Winslow shifted his overnight bag around on his shoulder to get more comfortable and told him, "Ah, yes. Winslow Fleach and my daughter, Marcie. I reserved a room last week for the Pageant of Gators festival."

Gunther went to the small desktop computer that sat off to the side of the main desk. After a short concerto of keystrokes, he soon found the needed confirmation.

"Ah, yess, Misster Fleach, we have you right here. Now, as you were given the ruless of the hotel when you made your reservation, men and women are to be given sseperate roomss, sso you have been given Room Sseven and your daughter will be given Room Eight. Will that be ssatisfactory for you?"

"Um, yes," Winslow said, trying to get used to Gunther's sibilant lisp.

"Will you need a bellboy to take your bagss?" Gunther offered.

"Oh, no, that's all right. We only came with these," Winslow said, showing him the strap of his shoulder bag. "But thanks, all the same."

Gunther brightened at that. "Not at all, and thank you for giving us your patronage, Misster Fleach, and pleasse, you and your daughter, enjoy your stay here at the Danccing Gator."

After receiving their room keys from the strange, yet pleasantly professional man, Marcie and Winslow walked up the winding stairs.

"You have to admit this isn't like you to just run off and leave the Factory like this," she said. "Way too spontaneous."

"I told you, Marcie, this is just research," Winslow said, with a twinge of anticipation.

"So, when this festival comes, I shouldn't have to worry about some Gatorsburg Jezebel spiriting you off into the night?" Marcie asked in jest, as they reached the third floor where their rooms were.

Stopping outside his room, Winslow, missing the joke, seriously considered such a scenario happening, then thought better of it. "Mmm...no, I don't think so. However, that shouldn't stop you from having a good time at the Pageant. I hear that they have a very comprehensive tour."

Marcie raised an eyebrow quizzically. It sounded like another typically frugal course of action from him. Which usually meant something particularly vexing for her. "Comprehensive or _inexpensive_ , Dad."

"Now, Marcie," Winslow said, pedantically raising a finger to make his point. "Being thrifty is not a sin. There's no sense in spending money like tourists. That's what tourists are for. We can still enjoy the celebration in a practical and fiscally responsible manner."

"Perish the thought," said an approaching, well-dressed woman in a pinkish business suit, from down the hall.

A recreated Greta Gator, she was still the owner of the hotel, and was as plump and redheaded as she was in her previous life, but she had lost her wall-eyed stare and sour disposition, little things that, in the long run, helped to make her a more successful businesswoman.

"Our good town always does especially well, financially, when the Pageant kicks off," Greta explained. "Y'all _did_ come to town for the Pageant, I trust?"

"Oh, yes, ma'am," Winslow said. "Most definitely. I'm an amusement park owner and I'm here to learn how your town arranges this wonderful festival year after year."

Well, I don't like to brag, none," Greta shrugged proudly, "but we folks do like to party and the Pageant of Gators always promises to be the biggest hootenanny of the year. If you want to know how we put it all together, I suggest you get in touch with the Gatorsburg Chamber of Commerce. They'll see you right."

Winslow bowed in gratitude. "Thanks, I will."

Greta glanced over at Marcie. "Is this your little girl?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Greta waved away the formality. "Oh, we don't stand on ceremony around here. You're my guests. Call me Greta."

"Okay...Greta," Winslow complied. "Yes, this is my daughter, Marcie."

Greta leaned close to the girl, as if studying a new species. "Well, hi, there, Marcie," she said, gregariously. "You know, here in Gatorsburg, we got some of the finest restaurants you'll ever see. I guarantee they'll put some meat on those bones, yet, child."

 _'Why does everyone think being thin is a bad thing?'_ Marcie thought. She suppressed a weary sigh and smiled graciously at the hotelier. "Thanks, ma'am." Then she added, innocently, just vex their host. "Although I have heard that alligator meat was considered very dry to eat."

"That's just propaganda from the Meat Council," Greta said, quick to defend the pride of her hometown before she said to the two of them, as a friendly reminder, "Anyway, I'm sure my son, Gunther, has already told you the rules. Men and women in separate rooms, oh, and no pets in the hotel."

"No problem," Marcie shrugged. "I'm not much of a pet person, anyway."

"That's fine," Greta said, satisfied. "Well, I won't keep y'all out here with all this jawin'. Remember, the Pageant starts tomorrow, so y'all get a good rest, and, as we say around here, "Eat the day!"

"Die Comedetis!" Marcie translated.

"What was that, hon?" Greta asked.

"Die Comedetis," Marcie attempted to explain. "It's Latin for "Eat the day." You see? Because it sounds like "Seize the day." Y'know, "Carpe Diem?"

Greta gave Marcie a deeply quizzical look that made the girl honestly wish she had kept her mouth shut.

"That's nice, dear," Greta condescended.

"Ugh, never mind," Marcie sulked to herself, as the hotelier shrugged and then left to go about her rounds.

Watching Greta descend the staircase, Marcie said to her father, "Y'know, I think I'll take you up on that tour idea, tomorrow. Besides, it'll give me a chance to think of what else I can do while I'm in town."

Winslow gave a thoughtful nod of approval. "Ah, multi-tasking while on vacation. You're truly a fragment separated from the previous cubicle."

 _'_ _True,_ _'_ Marcie thought with an amused smirk, as she went into the room across from his. _'I guess I_ am _a chip off the old block.'_

"See ya later, Dad," she said.


	2. Chapter 2

The Opening Parade of the Pageant. It was like waking up to an endless celebration after the long, dull dream of static life.

The crowds had assembled in downtown's St. Gator's Square in kaleidoscopic throngs earlier that morning and soon, under the direction of specific revelers carrying torches and beating drums, the countless party-goers would be led in a highly visible and merrymaking procession along the path of narrow lanes and past enthralled on-lookers.

With a roaring cheer and a flourish of drumrolls, the parade slowly, yet playfully, surged out. Paraders high-stepped, cakewalked, or simply strolled to conserve energy, in either full costume, or just face paint, and somewhere in the swelling, moving mass of party animals, delegates from other cities and artists also marched along with jovial gusto.

Zydeco and jazz could be heard joyously playing in the streets and the good-natured whoops and hollers could be heard just above that. Parades of dazzling dressed krewes and mummers, looking like human peacocks, marched past the entertained people, proud in attitude and gloriously gaudy in appearance.

Being so close to the square, the nearby hotels' patrons could hear the revelries from the highest balconies and the thickest walls of their sumptuous suites.

To strut their stuff at the very start of Pageant was beyond electric for the citizens, and was just the beginning. Three full days of civic merrymaking and intrigue, and nights of mysterious motives and romance were open to them, so they certainly didn't mind the odd, overexuberant jostle in the crowd.

The Pageant of Gators had returned to the world.

On the other side of town, the music was loud enough to be heard by Marcie and Winslow in the middle-rear seats of the upper level of the green, open-topped, double-decker tour bus with the gold filigree, that cruised along the historical routes that cut through one quarter, passed by another, and emerged into still another in a scenic, roundabout way.

Marcie's ears heard the male tour guide's recitation of Gatorsburg's origins and its eventual founding, but her attention kept drifting back to the music, so near and powerfully enticing. From her earlier studying of the bus's route, the closest it would get to the parade routes would be during a moment when both routes paralleled near the borders of Head Quarter and Middle Quarter. She hoped that would be soon.

Winslow, however, sat in rapt attention to not only the guide's speeches, but to the idea of having a similar feature brought back to serve his park in some fashion. He wondered why he hadn't thought of this years sooner.

"Isn't this fun, Marcie?" Winslow asked her.

"Hmm?" Marcie mumbled, still listening to the siren call of the Zydeco.

"The tour. Isn't it fun?" her father asked again.

Marcie, hearing the word "tour" and remembering his suggestion yesterday on taking one, snapped out of her daze. "Oh, yeah, Dad, it is, but I'd like to check out the Pageant while it's just starting up. That _is_ why we came here."

Winslow smiled parentally at her. "Oh, don't worry, Marcie. The celebration lasts for three days. You'll have plenty of time to party, but there's no sense in rushing things, now. Take you're time."

If it was anything else that Marcie wanted badly enough, she would have thought of someway to disobey such a statement, but a realization settled over her that he was absolutely right. She had time, so why blow through the vacation, simply because she was there? She had to admit that sometimes her youthful vigor could hinder things in her life, blind her eyes to better possibilities.

Marcie nodded at her father's wisdom, and said, "Okay." Then, she noticed that he was jotting things down in a notepad.

"Taking notes?" she asked him, conversationally.

Winslow brightened. "Taking great notes, in fact. Ideas are coming to me so easily, since I've been here, things I hadn't even considered before. Ha! Fleach's Folly Factory will be a masterpiece of family entertainment when I'm through."

Marcie smiled. "Glad to hear that. I guess travel _does_ broaden the mind, even if its only three miles from home. Well, I won't keep you. Scribble away."

Winslow nodded. "Very well, then."

Marcie went back to looking out at the Southern-style scenery of the historic neighborhoods. The bucolic old homes and mansions, and the stately cypress trees that stood guard over them. It was a quiet time capsule of the Deep South, transplanted by the earliest citizens from there, leaving to stake their claims in the west, but sheltered in the comforting cloaks of Southern traditions.

Marcie mused. These peaceful parts of town were proving to be just as enticing, in their own way, as the celebrations that honored it.

Then, she thought of something that brought a bittersweet smile to her. As appreciative as she was to have her father along, she suddenly wished Velma was here with her to enjoy this. But, she wasn't. She would have to settle for relating her little vacation to her online when she came back home.

"I can't wait to tell Velma about all of this," Marcie said to herself. Then, she said, as if making a promise to her long-gone friend, "I'm gonna have fun for the both of us, V."

Marcie glanced indifferently at the chattering tour guide, who worked from his position up front where a forward section of the roof remained to enclose that end of the upper deck's passage to and from the lower deck and entrance.

"As you may know," he said into his lavalliere, "Today is the start of the Pageant of Gators, our town's three day celebration honoring the humble and noble alligators that literally overnight created our fine Gatorsburg. The first Pageant started in 1903. Remembering how he loved Mardi Gras in his hometown of New Orleans, Salvatore A. Mander, the wealthy owner of Mander's Moccasins and Footwear, decided to open his new store and his new line of alligator skin boots with a parade down Main Street."

"The event was such a success," he continued, "That the city council decided to make it a yearly celebration, to give thanks to the bounty of alligators that created Gatorsburg, calling it the Pageant of Gators, which we still call, to this day."

Marcie had expected to hear more verbiage from the man, but the shocking boom of an explosion from the guide's direction woke her and the other passengers up from their collective ennui.

The blast shoved the tour guide to the floor and drove those in the seats near the passageway out of the green cloud bank, and back towards the others seated mid-way and rear of the upper deck.

Their flight instantly crowded the deck, as those ahead ran into those in the back, who didn't know what was going on, colliding and crushing the middle seaters.

Below, the bus driver had long since stopped the vehicle after the sound and the passengers of the lower deck were too confused and scared to move from their seats. However, above, in the loud, smokey confusion, a ragged-robed, skull-faced figure shuffled out of the green haze, cackling wildly at his mischief.

"Not afterwards, mes amis!" cried Pretre du Marais, as he slowly moved towards the back, herding the already frightened passengers into a tight, increasingly panicked mass. "Such empty praise for so a noble creature. Ze Pageant has been a sham and a mockery to the alligator since its corporate beginnings. I will put an end to the lie, by this Pageant's end. Mark my words, you thoughtless fools!"

Marcie, from her seat, was being pressed by Winslow, who was, himself, getting crushed against by the panicked people. She craned her neck up and around to try and see past the heads of the passengers, to get a look at who was doing this.

She finally managed to see the maniac clearly, just as Pretre du Marais ceased his stalking and lifted his staff, pointing it at the people with a flourish. "In ze meantime," he said. "Let ze Ghosts of Gators Past enlighten you." Then, he startled everyone by leaping over the side of the deck.

If anyone was curious as to where the shaman/priest went when he dived, however, they were quickly distracted by something far more attention-grabbing.

Coming from the sides of the bus, people could hear a growling hissing sound, and those who sat where the windows would be, looked over the sides, and were greeted by the horrific sights of alligators clawing and climbing upward against the lower deck's window frames, eager to get at the fleshy victims exposed on the open deck.

As the above passengers screamed in shock and horror, they also heard screams of terror rise suddenly, from the lower deck, as if a hole from Hell opened up from down there, releasing the wails of the damned, and adding them to their own.

The bus driver, still buckled in his seat, craned his head around in time to see the horror-stricken mass of passengers behind him surge with a herd mentality for the front doors.

He moved his hand over to his seat belt buckle, preparing to free himself and stand up to face the mob, to do his job and protect the riders in his care, but he couldn't even leave his seat in time before the wind was instantly crushed out of him, as he was pinned between the steering wheel and the fearful weight of desperate bodies.

His foot stumbled back onto the accelerator pedal and his hand flopped against the gear shift, setting the bus back to Drive, as questing arms and hands thrust past his unconscious body to find the switch on the dashboard that opened the main doors.

The bus lurched into motion, and Marcie felt a hand grip her arm like a steel band. It was her father, trying to get her away from her window seat, while at the same time, trying to push through the masses that choked the aisle, themselves trying to get from the sides of the bus and rush down the passageway.

"Come on, Marcie!" Winslow urged. "We have to get out of here before we're eaten alive!"

Marcie managed to glance over her side of the bus. Apparitions of alligators did appear, approaching her, and then, just as suddenly, they vanished, revealing the moving street and the approaching crest of a hill below.

She blinked her eyes clear for a moment and she didn't understand why she was seeing such a thing. Despite her blinking, the gators appeared once again, then faded away, once more. She blinked one more time, and this time, the gators didn't come back.

"Wait, Dad!" Marcie tried to tell him through the cacophony. "I-I don't think..."

Whatever Marcie was going to say next died in her throat at what she saw from her high vantage point.

Aided by the upper deck's height, she stood and leaned over the side, and could see, from beyond the approaching hill, the crowds and the Pageant's opening parade moving along the street that crossed the hill's base.

Her stomach felt like it bottomed out into her knees. Once the bus reached the hill, it would become a battering ram, it was as simple as that, and even if the spectators managed to get out of the way, in time, the floats, and everyone on them, would be sitting ducks.

 _'_ _W_ _hy was the bus driver still driving?_ ' she thought, but there was no time for answers now, and no way to calm everybody and help get control of the situation.

Plus, it didn't help to see her father wrenched away from her side and disappear into the wave of bodies looking for escape.

"Mar-Marcie!" was all she could hear before he was gone.

"Dad! Dad!"

Ponderously, the bus was still in motion, closing in on the hill. People on board would die, and more would be added when it hit the parade, her brain screamed at her. If she was clear-headed enough to act, then she had to. As much as she hated to think it, her father had to wait.

Standing on her seat to get a clear view of the deck, Marcie could see people crammed into the shelter of the partially roofed forward section that opened to the stairway that led to the lower deck.

Reaching into her the inner pocket of her wool jacket, she grabbed a couple of Discourager capsules, aimed and threw them against the inner side of the side window of the shelter. The capsules broke, releasing their horrid, burning stink into the crowd, who reacted satisfactorily to Marcie, by scattering from the shelter and back to the open area of the upper deck for air.

With an opening made, Marcie made an apology to the passengers and began to ungainly walk, hop and leap on their heads and shoulders, getting clumsily closer to the shelter.

With angry, confused people in her wake, Marcie jumped down from the last passenger's shoulders and landed in the cleared aisle just before the shelter. Quickly, she ran down the winding staircase, and witnessed barely contained chaos.

Passengers were crammed where the driver sat, and, in fact, she couldn't even see him. Those that didn't have room to panic up front, crowded against the windows, beating against them and trying to claw them apart with sore, red hands.

 _'What's going on up front,'_ she thought. _'Why was the driver still driving the bus?'_

"Hey! Bus driver! Hey, stop driving!" Marcie yelled, as she stumbled and tip-toed past the frightened humanity in the aisle.

She made it halfway across the bus, then reached into her jacket again, took out another pair of Discouragers and threw them over the heads of the people in her way. Cracking open against the ceiling, they rained noxious chemicals over the throng's heads and faces.

They wailed as they began to spread out and away from the driver's area and back towards the seating area.

Marcie fought her way through the subdued, returning passengers, like a salmon upstream, finally reaching the out-cold driver.

"Well, that explains things," she said, examining him.

Residual Discourager mist was starting to make her eyes smart and water, but by blinking, she could just see the hill's crest inching up towards them, from the bus's panoramic windshield.

Knowing that she didn't have time to unbuckle the driver before they went over the crest, Marcie pulled the man into an upright seated position, so she could have room to reach over and grab hold of the unfamiliar steering wheel.

"Okay, I've got steering," she nervously said to herself. "Gotta get control."

Risking not seeing anything outside of the bus, Marcie looked down into the dark space of the pedals and saw the driver's foot planted halfway on the accelerator. She managed to reach his foot with her own, and kick his away, but not before the bus finally rolled over the peak of the steep hill and coasted down.

People who knew that the bus was free-wheeling down the hill and building up more speed with every passing second, wailed anew, which didn't help Marcie's teary concentration in trying to steer this multi-ton beast.

Her outstretched foot tapped and fumbled uselessly for the brake in the dark well under the dashboard, going more by feel than sight, which was already hampered by the Discouragers.

Outside, the speeding bus was devouring yards by the second, and the distressing fact that as it built up speed, the kinetic energy released when it finally slammed into something, or several someones, would be devastating, was not loss on her.

She looked up from her pedal search and saw the parade closing in, and her heart jumped hard in her breast. They were too close. _Much_ too close.

She banged on the bus's horn, but she needn't have bothered. Patrons alerted by others across the street, had already looked from the entertainment and saw the killer bus rumbling straight towards them. They scattered from the foot of the hill, like athletes.

 _'That t_ _a_ _k_ _es_ _care of the spectators,'_ she thought. _'But not the floats.'_

Her foot hit and finally found the brake, but she fought her impulse to use it fully. As a driver, she understood that she had to somehow turn away from the floats as she applied brake, to slow down this monster and save the paraders.

As someone who understood science, she knew she had to do all of that _carefully_ , to defeat the massive momentum the bus had gained, or the bus would turn too sharply and flip over, certainly spilling and killing everyone on the upper deck, including her father.

Holding her breath and wrenching the steering wheel around fast, Marcie aimed the bus for the curb at the foot of the hill, to give herself the widest angle to maneuver with.

The bus bounced from hitting the curb, but had enough space to turn and roll parallel to a pink and white float sporting a large, proud-looking gator on top.

The paraders on the float, all girls, representing all-star students from Gatorsburg High, were caught off-guard by the bus's sudden appearance, and screamed at the near broadside, as Marcie fought to keep the wheel turning and forcing the bus away from the vehicle.

When the bus settled into its turn and slowed, not coming any closer to the float, Marcie put all her weight onto the brake, lurching the heavy vehicle to a blessed stop.

Marcie, experimentally, put the bus in Park, then turned around to face the passengers so she could judge their condition. All around the seating area, people were littered about the chairs and aisle, moaning and breathless from their fearful exertions, but they seemed quieter, more calm to her.

Policemen rushed over, frantically knocking on the front doors, and Marcie, finding the door controls, let them in. As they began to lead passengers out of the bus's lower deck, Marcie slalomed past them and ran back upstairs to the upper deck.

There, it was more off the same. Bodies recovering, yet cluttering the seating area of the upper deck, haphazardly.

"The police are here," Marcie called out to them. "Everybody go downstairs so they can take care of you."

Slowly, the people closest to her got up, walked unsteadily past, and descended the stairwell. Soon, the others behind them began to shamble past, and as the deck began to clear, Marcie could see Winslow seated on a window seat with his leg propped up across its aisle-side neighbor.

She jogged over to him. His glasses were askew, as were his clothes and hair, but she was thankful to Heaven that he was still alive.

"Are you all right, Dad?" she asked.

Winslow straightened his sitting to be more comfortable while speaking. "Oh, Marcie. Where were you? I thought the alligators had gotten you. I couldn't find you at all."

"I had to stop the bus," she told him,

"By yourself?" he asked, aghast.

"Yeah," she shrugged, ignoring his concern. Then, she looked down at his favored, extended leg. "What happened to your leg?"

"I sprained it in the aisle when everybody was trying to leave the bus. I'll be fine." Winslow said, then he looked around, bewildered. "Wh-Where are the alligators?"

Marcie took a seat across the aisle from Winslow's two. "I don't think there were any to begin with, Dad, but whoever that guy was, he's a menace," she said, quietly, taking a breather.

Marcie finally exited the bus, supporting her father under his arm and seeing the police cordon and the crowds that formed on the street, bringing the parade to an early, if temporary, stop.

She was about to wave a policeman over, when a gracefully aged, platinum blonde woman in a well-tailored suit walked through the police-barricaded crowds with an air of authority that suggested that there were few places she was barred from.

"Excuse me, but are you the one who stopped the bus?" the woman asked, as she approached father and daughter.

"Yes," Marcie answered her, wondering if she was a reporter.

"I want to thank you," the woman said, offering her hand. "My name is Priscilla Blanchard. When you stopped that bus from hitting the float, you saved my grand-daughter."

Marcie shifted her weight under Winslow, shook the soft, manicured hand, and digested the impact of her actions this day. "Wow! I didn't know, but I'm happy your grand-daughter is safe, ma'am. I'm glad _everyone's_ safe, as a matter of fact, but you'll have to excuse me, ma'am. I have to get my father to a hospital. He was hurt."

"Please, allow me to repay you in kind. Let me take you father to the hospital," Blanchard offered, seeing the hobbled man.

Winslow quickly spoke up for himself after that exchange. "I don't need to go to a hospital, Marcie. I simply need to soak my ankle in hot water and Epsom salts, and then wrap it up. Hospitals are far too expensive."

Marcie was used to his fiscally conservative protestations, but she was unsure of his grousing when he was actually hurt and such frugality could cost him his health. "Are you sure, Dad?"

"Of course," he placated. "Just because you're incapacitated, it doesn't mean you can't save money."

Marcie sighed to herself. "Of course." Then, she returned her attention back to Blanchard. "Anyway, I'm glad I was able to save your grand-daughter, ma'am."

Blanchard slipped a hand into her jacket and produced a smooth white card, giving it to her. "Then, before I take my grand-daughter home, please, accept my card, and allow me to take you back to your hotel."

Marcie asked, suspiciously. "How do you know we're staying in a hotel?"

"Simple," Blanchard said to her. "The Pageant's here, tourists are everywhere, and you don't sound like you're from around here, anyway."

Marcie thought about that. She might not have been conscious of it, but she and her father were probably carrying on like the biggest tourist rubes in town. She shrugged and accepted the card. "Good point and thank you."

"You're welcome," Blanchard said, leading them from the cordon, and pleased to reciprocate the rescue. "My limo is on the other side of the street."

"Limo?" Marcie and Winslow asked in unison, as they followed her.


	3. Chapter 3

Greenman sat in his tailored, silk robe on the deep green chair of his arboreal-themed office, at the moment, the living center of his naturalistic universe. He picked up the envelope that he had sealed just moments before from his broad, oaken desk, and mused.

"I believe it was one of this country's presidents who said it best," Greenman said to himself with contentment while he turned the envelope playfully in his fingers. ""We must never negotiate out of fear, but we must never fear to negotiate.""

He put the envelope back down on the desk and stood to watch the afternoon skies over Crystal Cove through his office's panoramic windows.

"Well, he was half right," he said with a slight smile of satisfaction.

* * *

Marcie left her hotel room and had seen Greta Gator just leave Winslow's, before she, herself, walked across the ornate corridor, opened the door to her father's bedroom, and peered inside.

From the doorway, she could see Winslow sitting up in bed, his bandaged foot elevated on pillows, and his bed covered with notes and a notepad or two.

"What's up?" Marcie asked with a smile of support, as she stepped in the room.

"Oh, just going my notes from today," he said, looking up from an interesting scripture. "Apart from my ankle getting twisted, I'd say things were coming along smoothly."

"I love your optimism, Dad, but what about your vacation?" Marcie asked. "You don't want to spend the rest of it in bed, do you?"

Winslow glanced at his daughter with a contented eye. "Oh, Marcie. You and I both know that this is all the vacation I need. Working on ways to improve our park. I'm never truly happy, otherwise."

"Well, you're preaching to the choir on that one," Marcie said.

"But, like I said earlier, it doesn't mean you can't have a good time while we're here," her father reasoned. "Go ahead, have fun at the Pageant. Who knows, you might just meet a nice boy while you're here."

"I doubt _that'll_ happen, Dad," Marcie said, quietly, looking a little uncomfortable, but she hid it away in a nervous chuckle, and changed the subject. "But I did see Mrs. Gator come out of your room before I came in. Is there something going on between _you two_?"

"Miss."

"Huh?" asked Marcie, thinking that Winslow said that because Marcie was incorrect.

"Miss," he said again. " _Miss_ Gator, not Mrs., not since her husband died in the mines, a long time ago. Dangerous work, from what she tells me. Anyway, ever since she found out about my injury, she's been very attentive to me, for some reason. Just between us and the notepads, I think she's falling for the old Fleach charm, but I don't know if I'll have time to deal with that and make my plans for the park's improvements."

Marcie smiled and shook her head. "Look, this might not come to anything, and I doubt she'll be changing her last name to Fleach, anytime soon, but c'mon, Dad, live a little. Have some fun. If Miss Gator is crushing on you, then, see where it goes. The park will always be there."

Now, it was Winslow's turn to smile and shake his head at his daughter. "Marcie, Marcie. You truly are your mother's daughter. Love is fast, fleeting, and fickle. There's no stability in it. Yes, you'll probably say that that's what makes it fun, but that's because you're young. When you get older, you'll discover that you need more stable things in your life. A career, a well-built house, a well-oiled business. Those things can't maintain themselves. Remember, the price of a solid fiscal quarter is eternal vigilance."

Marcie sighed inwardly at her own foolishness. These were the conversations they had in the past, and this was how it ended, always.

 _'Why would I think or hope_ that _would change?'_ she thought, then, suddenly, she frowned to herself. _'Where did that come from? This is my_ dad _. Everybody knows what a workaholic he is, but he's a good man. Co-workers, myself...'_

_'Mom...'_

Marcie gave a sigh to her father, as she walked back towards the doorway. "If you say so, Dad. Well, I'm going to go now. Good luck with what you find in those notes, and if you need me, just holler, okay?"

"Don't worry, Marcie," Winslow said, his attention becoming more drawn to the notes on his bed. "Miss Gator will probably have that taken care of. Have fun."

The door closed, between the two of them, it seemed to feel to Marcie, as she walked down the staircase.

"Okay, that's just stupid talk," she debated with herself on the way down. "He works hard for the family. Okay, granted, he can become a little... _obsessed_ with the park, but that's because it's his baby."

Marcie had reached the second floor, but the debate had yet to abate. "Okay, so, maybe it needs his constant, steady hand to keep it from sinking. If that's the case, I'm a big girl. I'll understand. But why am I still worried about it? Am I just acting needy? Being selfish?"

She stopped in thought for a moment. "Was Mom?"

By the time she reached the head of the stairs leading to the first floor, she had resigned herself, once again, to stop asking the same questions that haunted and demanded answers from her whenever she and Winslow had these talks.

So, as Marcie sat in the lobby's antique couch and stared at the fireplace, she focused on distracting herself with other questions, instead. Who was it that caused the events that hurt her father, and how could she get back at him, or, at least, stop him from hurting others?

She heard a sound from where the employees' entrance was, and saw Greta Gator carrying a small bowl of soup out. Marcie knew the hotel had staff that could bring that bowl to wherever it was desired, so she knew where it was going.

It was rare for her father to embarrass her, like this. No. She amended that. Her father had unwittingly embarrassed her before, mainly through his seemingly unshakable faith in saving money, either by cutting corners, or by just being unbelievably cheap.

Her _Hot Dog Water_ nome de plume was, of course, the pinnacle of that, she thought darkly.

But not this time. Now she felt embarrassed because of his workaholic lack of connection towards _others_ , and not just to her, which she long expected. That, although Marcie would go to her grave saying that he was a good man, he might be obliviously taking advantage of Greta, if the notion of her doting on him was correct.

"Miss Gator," Marcie called out from the lobby. "I can get that to my father, if you're too busy."

Greta gave a smile. "Oh, that's alright, darlin'. I ain't too busy. Besides, it's been a long time since I had anyone else taste my home cookin', except my boy, Gunther, and my brother, Grady. He owns a gas station not too far from here."

Marcie studied her while Greta approached the staircase landing, but she believed there was nothing to figure out. This was a good woman, in the girl's mind. Perhaps _she_ could do what her mother...

Marcie sighed, banishing the dark thoughts of filial loneliness from her again. She focused once more on the attacker on the tour bus, and realized that she didn't know a thing about him, but he did have a mad-on for the Pageant, for some reason. Maybe that was a clue, in and of itself.

Local knowledge was needed, so she got up off the couch, and asked Greta, "Could I ask you a question?"

"Never hurts to ask," said Greta, as she ascended and Marcie followed.

"Do you know anything about a man who wears an alligator skull for a mask and old robe?"

Greta stopped walking in thought for a moment, then continued, saying, "The only person I know who wears somethin' like that is Pretre du Marais."

"Who's he? Sounds French."

"He was," Greta told her. "He's a local legend around here. Pretre du Marais means "Priest of the Swamp." No one knows what his real name was, but he got that name after what happened to him. Oh, I'd tell that story to Gunther all the time, so he'd go to bed. Like last week."

Below them and coming from the front desk, they heard the indignant cry of Gunther, who had overheard, yelling, "Mother!" Both females ignored it.

"What happened to him?" Marcie asked, keenly interested.

"Well, a long time ago, when Gatorsburg was smaller and just starting out as a mining town, it was wild and woolly, as most towns were back then. A French Catholic priest was passing through and tried to give the miners a bit of the Good Word. Well, he got run out of town for his troubles.

Now, he didn't know the lay of the land, and he got himself lost in what are now our Source Swamps, and I can tell you, the critters there had a hankerin' for human flesh, somethin' awful, but for some reason, he didn't become gator chow. In fact, the Good Lord must've been smiling on him, because he survived in there for so long that he became one with the swamp, and soon, became its protector.

But something changed in him. He became as cold as the gators he lived with, and he proved it one night by returning to town with a few of those gators, and settling the score with the miners who ran him out. After that, he went back into the swamp, his name, forgotten, but his legend was talked about all over town. A dangerous guardian of the wetlands, known as Pretre du Marais. The Priest of the Swamp."

"Wow," Marcie managed to say, swept away by such a tale, and surprised that they made it to the third floor so soon.

"Why do you ask?" Greta asked her, coming up to Winslow's door.

"Because I think I just seen him today attacking a tour bus," said Marcie. "He's the reason my dad's laid up, right now."

Greta gave an disbelieving chuckle. "Well, I doubt that. The Priest doesn't exist. He's just a fairy tale to put naughty boys to sleep."

"Mother!" came Gunther's distant, sibilant voice again. Again, it was ignored.

Greta opened the door with her master key, telling the girl, "Anywho, all your father needs is some good ol' fashioned Western Southern Hospitality, and he'll be right as rain."

She was about to step in, when Marcie touched her arm to stop her.

"Greta, I know my father," she told her. "It might not look like he's showing it, but he really appreciates what you're doing. Thank you for looking after him."

Greta gave a warm smile to her. "Oh, you don't have to apologize for him, darlin'. I've seen my share of workin' men before. Heck, I was raised by one and married to another. I know their type and I know that they need a strong woman to look after them. Who knows, maybe one day, you'll be a strong woman to someone who needs one the most."

Greta walked into the room and left Marcie in the hall with her thoughts.

"Maybe," Marcie said to herself, wondering. Then, she went into her room.

She looked over at the bed, and decided that she had never seen anything so inviting. She was worn out from the day's events and needed to exorcise the insecurities that vexed her.

Marcie fell into the bed with a backwards flop, luxuriating in sinking into the mattress before it sprung back into shape. From the corner of her eye, she saw something white flutter up from her bounce and then flutter back down to the floor.

She leaned over the bed to pick up what it was. It was the business card that Priscilla Blanchard had given her. On the face of it was blue embossed lettering that read "Blanchard Mines. Priscilla Blanchard-President." Below that, was a telephone number.

Out of curiosity, Marcie turned the card over, and, handwritten in ink, was another phone number. That piqued her interest.

She got up and went over to the telephone that sat on the night stand, took a deep breath to ready herself for whatever she was, no doubt, going to get into, and dialed.


	4. Chapter 4

_'Man, the lab I could buy with_ that _kind of money,'_ Marcie thought, as she walked through the opulent living room of the mansion that sat among the other mansions in the stately Middle Quarter of town, led by the impeccably dressed and preternaturally poised butler.

The power of this family's old money was almost tangible around her, silken, and at the same time, full of irresistible influence, like a harnessed hurricane, capable of manifesting any admitted desire or directing any worldly action.

It could be felt in the delicate, crystal chandeliers and well-preserved oak furniture, in the maintained tapestries and one-of-a-kind Persian carpeting, and in the parlor rooms, where the schemes and excesses of the ghosts of by-gone, familial captains of industry could still be felt, long after their time.

The butler escorted Marcie through the patio at the rear, and out into the green ocean of a manicured and landscaped backyard that sprawled out from the imposing presence of Priscilla Blanchard's mansion.

Exposed to the open sunshine, Marcie could see her host sitting in the ivy-laced, gleaming white gazebo waiting for the teen's arrival, a financial newspaper in one hand and sipping sweet iced tea with the other.

Seated at the same table were four other people, quietly conversing with her. Priscilla lifted her head smoothly, looked out from her vast yard, and spied Marcie and her manservant on the approach.

She signaled her invitation with a light wave of her hand. "Ah! Marcie, you're here. Good."

Marcie nodded to her host, as the butler returned to the house. "Hello again, Miss Blanchard. How are you?"

"Fine, fine," she said, pleasantly gesturing to the others. "Allow me introduce you to my son, Richard Blanchard, who runs the day-to-day operations of my company. Mr. George, one of my company's staff geologists. And Mr. Wharton and Miss McAfee. They're here from the Government Environmental Agency, investigating this recent rash of mining attacks, here in town."

Richard, a thick-built man sporting a carefully groomed handlebar mustache, stood up and offered his hand to Marcie.

"So, you're the one who saved my daughter? Thank you. Thank you, very, very much," he told her sincerely, shaking and easily obscuring her slender hand in between his two massive ones. "I don't know what I'd do if she were lost to me."

Marcie gave a bashful smile. It wasn't everyday that someone thanked her for saving a life. "It was my pleasure, Mr. Blanchard."

Then, she looked over towards the GEA team, saying, "I didn't know the GEA also looked into mining accidents, too. I thought you guys only dealt with, y'know, the environment."

Richard looked back at the government workers, his face went dark with disapproval. "My thoughts, exactly," he said. "This is a matter for the police, or at the very least, someone from that part of the government who handles this sort of thing."

Mr. Wharton, a tall, thin, tow-headed man, gave a sympathetic shrug. "Normally, they would send someone from there, but, as you know, Mr. Blanchard, these aren't your average mines."

Miss McAfee, an African-American woman, with a professional air, chimed in. "True enough. Because of the tunnel networks, all of the mines are as much part of the alligators' local habitat as the Source Swamps, and _that_ makes it environmental, Mr. Blanchard."

Richard rolled his eyes and scoffed. "If you say so." Then, he reached down under the table and favored his leg. "Ah! My arthritic knee's acting up again. Must be getting ready to rain soon."

Marcie, watching this little drama play out, suddenly began to wonder, not only, how she could offer to help them, but even if she _should_.

"Excuse me," she interjected, politely. "But does any of this have to do with Pretre du Marais?"

Marcie had to admit that she didn't expect the explosion of laughter that fired out of Richard, at the mentioning of that name.

"Him?" Richard guffawed. "That fairy tale? Ha! I've read the foreman's reports on some crackpot dressed as him, scaring the workers, and disrupting our business. Trust me, it's not some supernatural eco-terrorist, it's just a crank in a mask thinking it's a hoot to do this nonsense during the Pageant. That's why I say that it's a matter for law enforcement, not hippies on the government payroll. No offense."

"None taken, Mr. Blanchard," McAfee said, smoothly. "But do keep in mind that if anything is out of the ordinary in your company's mines, we hippies do have the power to shut you down."

Richard, caught off-guard from the threat, sputtered angrily, "You wouldn't!"

"We would," Wharton chimed in. "No offense."

Richard steeled himself and stared hard at his challengers. _'Anti-capitalists_ _,_ _to a man,'_ he thought. _'I dealt with your kind before.'_

"Go and look all you want," he told them with a dismissive wave. "Have a nice picnic lunch in those caves, for all I care. You'll not find one thing that's out of sorts there that wasn't caused by that masked idiot. Mother, tell them!"

Priscilla Blanchard raised her hand for peace. "Son, these people are here because the problem posed by Pretre du Marais doesn't just affect us, but all of the other companies' mines and businesses, as well."

"Then let our competition deal with him, too," Richard reasoned. "Why are we the only ones giving a hot hoot about him?"

"Because," she explained. "The other companies are already pointing fingers at one another and us, thinking that one of us is breaking Article One of the agreement."

"Nonsense," Richard snorted.

Marcie raised her hand to interject again. "Forgive me for sounding like a noob, but what's going on?"

Blanchard regarded the girl and apologized. "I'm sorry, Marcie. I've been a terrible host. We've just been at odds with all of these attacks and we're just trying to find an effective solution to them."

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about, Miss Blanchard," Marcie said. "I think I figured out a way you can pay me back for saving your granddaughter."

Blanchard raised a gray, razor-thin eyebrow. "Oh? How?"

"By letting me help you solve this mystery before I have to leave in three days," Marcie explained. "The Pageant's the only reason my dad and me are here. When it's over, we're going back home."

Everyone else was silent as Priscilla sat still in deep thought. Then, with calm deliberation, she asked, "Say I decide to say yes to this...rather strange request. What's in it for you?"

Marcie's face hardened slightly. "That so-called urban legend hurt my dad. I guess that would be enough for me, but I like to multi-task. I want to help you make sure that this guy doesn't hurt anybody else, either."

Richard looked thoughtful, as well, to Marcie's reasoning. He liked people with drive, but was she biting off more than she could chew?

"Well, that's nice of you to volunteer, Marcie, is it?" he offered. "But it's way too dangerous. Besides, what have you got to bring to the party, anyway?"

Marcie was quick to answer. "I've helped my sheriff solve a string of mysteries in my hometown of Crystal Cove," she said, omitting, with a rather sheepish feeling inside, the fact that that selfsame sheriff had thrown her in the pokey almost as many times for interference. "I'm also a halfway decent chemist, so I figure one more brain on the team wouldn't hurt."

Priscilla asked, cautiously, "Is your father okay with what you're doing?"

"Oh, c'mon, it's not like I'm risking my life solving mysteries because I'm trying to work through my depression over the fact that I miss my girlfriend, who left home for some unexplained reason," she said with a nervous chuckle, then realized, from the staring, perplexed faces, her faux pas.

"Oh, yeah, he's totally on board with it," she lied.

"All right, then," Priscilla said, apparently satisfied with the situation. "How much do you know about out town's economy?"

"I read up on it before coming here," Marcie said. "Essentially, it's a huge gator-based economy, the largest in the United States, with smaller businesses that support it, along with the usual businesses a town would have."

Richard nodded. "That's correct. The various alligator-based food, clothing, and luggage companies own specific mines which connect directly to the protected Source Swamps. By law, they nor any private citizen is allowed to interfere or interact with those swamps unless they're agents of the GEA."

"And, naturally," his mother added. "Alligator mining is not without _its_ risks. Gator miners have to deal with the gators as they come out of the cave's underground lakes, and that means luring them out with pheromones and baited traps.

From a corporate perspective, the risks come from the fact that although the individual companies may own the mines, they can't tell how many gators will use a particular mines' tunnel network before they're caught and harvested. One mine might become a honey hole one day, and then, bone dry, the next. It's a gamble that every CEO has learned to get used to and factor into their fiscal calculations.

It also bears mentioning that influencing gator output, by any means, is a strict violation of Article One of the Alligator Free Market Agreement, of which every company, including my own, is a signatory."

"And that's why I can't believe that the other companies would stoop to thinking that we would break Article One of the agreement," Richard huffed. "We've been on the level since the signing. Humph! Someone must be losing money hand over fist to try and pull a power grab like this."

"If it _is_ a power grab," said Priscilla. "Then they'll gain nothing in the attempt, because _we're_ losing money just as fast as they are, unless we can find this saboteur and expose him."

She stood up and said to the assembly with practiced finality, "Very well, people. We are know what we have to do." She looked towards the teenager. "Marcie, we'll all get you up to speed, and then we'll see about saving my company."

Then, she added, as a last minute postscript. "Oh, and the town, too. "

* * *

The bouncing jeep had finally stopped at the mouth of the cave, and for the fifth time since she left town, Marcie had to adjust her hard hat on her head.

Although the various mines' owners had offices in the Head Quarter downtown, she wished that she was back in town for the partying. However, the mines were just outside of Gatorsburg proper, and she had to remind herself that she _had_ volunteered.

"When we get into the cave, walk single-file behind me, and follow the rail car tracks," said George. "It'll be safer."

"All right."

They both disembarked and walked towards the natural maw of the mountain, and because this was her first time doing this, Marcie couldn't help but feel like some later-day Orpheus, as they descended into the depths.

"I've been going over the foreman's incident reports that Mr. Blanchard gave me," Marcie told him. "According to them, Pretre du Marais has been harassing not only your company's miners, but the other companies' miners, too, for about three weeks now. The only real question is why."

"It could be corporate espionage," George suggested.

Marcie shrugged. "It could be. Maybe there's a new company in town, attacking all of the mines because its president didn't sign that agreement of yours."

"Maybe, but we can, at least, look for some clues in the last mine that kook went into," the geologist said.

At once, Marcie gave him a skeptical look. "Yeah, about these mines, Mr. George. I read about them, and I'm sorry, but I find it very hard to believe that you're actually pulling alligators out of caves like they're iron ore, or something. Alligators aren't known for their subterranean _habitats!_ "

George heard Marcie's outburst and turned around in time to see her almost fall to the side. She braced herself against the natural rock wall, catching her breath.

"Are you okay?" he asked, reaching over and helping her back up.

"I guess...I slipped."

"You gotta be careful in these caves," he advised. "The rocks are slippery here."

"Gotcha," Marcie sighed, then continued to follow him deeper into the cave at a more cautious pace.

"Anyway," George continued. "What if I told you that we _are_ pulling them straight out of the caves. In a manner of speaking."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Well, we're here at the foot of the local mountain range and the surrounding hills," he said. "In these areas are all the mines that are owned by Big Gator."

"Big Gator?" Marcie asked. "You mean, like "Big Oil?"

George chuckled. "That's the name we use to describe the town's largest, publicly-owned, gator-based companies. Anyway, behind the mountains there's this huge system of wetlands. We call those the Source Swamps."

"Source Swamps?"

George nodded. "That's where all the alligators come from."

"I thought they came from the mines," Marcie said.

"They do," George explained, as they saw, up ahead, the faint lights of the lakes and processing cavern. "See, the land on which Gatorsburg is built is geologically active. Thousands of years ago, that activity created underground and underwater tunnel systems between the Source Swamps and the mountains and hills. Due to overpopulation, the alligators have been using these tunnels for years, as a kind of highway, to get from the swamps to the caves in the mountains to look for food.

When miners in the 1800's explored the caves and saw the high numbers of gators that emerged to and from the caves' lakes, they came to realize that they would do whole lot better as trappers. And because so many alligators could be brought out of the caves, consistently, the miners jokingly called the caves "alligator mines," and the name just stuck."

Entering the chamber with the geologist, Marcie nodded in understanding. "Ah. Food for thought."

"Well, if we don't want to end up food for _gators_ , we better watch our step here. Pretre du Marais attacked around this area, so there may be some clues to find here."

Marcie looked around the area, marveling at the industry wrought from this dank place. It was dim, but still visibly accommodating, from the spotty lighting given off by those mounted lamps that weren't inexplicably damaged by the criminal priest during his recent mayhem.

Except for the empty rail car sitting on its tracks, it was almost reminiscent of a fish processing plant, a no-nonsense prep station set up right next to the water. But now it was eerily deserted. Large, soiled tables stood with their unused rolls of strong, water-proof electrical tape, and abandoned rubber gloves, hard hats, hand tools, and nets littered the ground. Then, she noticed the fence that spanned the circumference of the small lake.

"The fence keeps the alligators in the lake, I assume," Marcie postulated, or rather, hoped.

"Yep. The only way, in or out, for us or the gators, is the gate," George said, pointing to the gate nearby. "Security locked it and the other lake gates, so we'll be fine."

Then, both turned their heads to the sound of someone calling from back towards civilization.

"George! George!" the voice echoed. "Come here for a second!"

"I think it's the foreman," said George. "I'll see what he wants. You keep looking around and I'll join you when I get back."

George turned about and hiked back up the pathway towards the cave's entrance, as Marcie watched him go. Then, she turned on the light in her hard hat, to improve visibility, and went about inspecting the area.

Taking out her magnifying lens from her jacket, Marcie gave the tables, gloves and the interior of the rail car a thorough looking over, but apart from their haphazard abandonment, nothing seemed amiss to her.

If Pretre du Marais was here recently, then there had to be something left behind. It would have been particularly frustrating if there was nothing to show for her efforts, thus far.

"Wait a minute," she reasoned aloud, remembering how that wayward priest attacked earlier. "Me, Dad, and the passengers were fine before that creep showed up on our tour bus. Then, there was all of that smoke...and everybody panicked. I know I saw an alligator climbing up the side of the bus for a minute. If that's what everyone else saw, too, then maybe we're dealing with illusions. That green smoke...might have been an hallucinogen."

With that, she felt it was time to change tactics. Reaching into her jacket pocket again, she produced a small plastic bag and a tongue depressor. She knelt down on the wet ground, took a few tiny scoops of mud from the area with the depressor, and smeared it into the bag.

Marcie admitted to herself that this was a gamble, to be sure. Moisture from the chamber might have affected the terrain in some deleterious way that would have made whatever clues she sought in the mud difficult or even impossible to detect, but it was a workable theory, one that she wasn't afraid to disprove, if it came to that.

A trail of small bubbles danced on the fenced-in lake behind her. Questing nostrils broke the surface of the water with a practiced silence that took millions of years to master.

The scent was unmistakable. With a smooth surge of power, it cruised, unseen and unheard, up to the bank of the lake.

"Maybe this guy is a chemist, like me," Marcie mused, putting a mud sample into another baggie.

The gate quietly swung open with an experimental nudge of its snout, a snout that homed in on the delicious, primal aroma that came from the kneeling human prey with her back to the killer.

Adrenaline sang in the gator's veins as he stalked the meal, carefully closing the distance until it was ready to rush across space to bring her down with bone-crushing jaws.

_Six feet..._

_Four feet..._

Marcie's head curiously swiveled upon catching the sound of an all-too eager hunter giving a triumphant, if premature, growl-hiss in celebration of the kill.

From the corner of her eye, Marcie saw the charging alligator lunge, open-mouthed and full bore, on her.

A screech flew from her throat, and with her heart bouncing fearfully in her chest, she leaped ahead and tore into a sprint, keeping her eyes fixed on the gator to judge how close it was to her, since she was, now, well aware, of how close it was to overtaking her.

However, so focused was she on the gator, Marcie didn't look ahead of her and tripped badly on the rail car tracks with a yelp, falling hard a few feet from the hunting reptile.

With a desperate reflex that surprised her, she rolled away, hard, to the side, the jaws just missing her by half a foot.

After a few seconds of rolling, Marcie stopped to see how far she was from the gator. She was couple of yards from the crocodilian, as the predator stopped, realized it missed, and swung its powerful head around, locking its snout onto Marcie's direction.

Hissing in frustration, it charged again, feet clawing into the living rock to propel it into a ravenous fury. From her prone form, Marcie knew that she didn't have time to stand and run before the animal would literally cut her off at the knees with a crippling bite.

"Keep away from me!" she screamed at it, not caring whether it understood English or not. "Mr. George! Mr. George! Help!" She prayed that she didn't lose her balance or her arm strength while she backed away as fast as she could.

For one desperate second, Marcie thought about stopping her crawl, momentarily, and quickly reaching into her jacket for one of her capsules, preferably a Discourager, or even an Insta-Ice, considering what it could do to a cold-blooded beast like this one. But upon pragmatic reflection, she knew that if she didn't have time to stand, she had even less to fumble into pockets, find the right capsule, and throw it accurately before violent death took her.

With terrified eyes, the teen looked around for an alternative, seeking a ready weapon to fight off the closing alligator. She saw one of the discarded hand tools, a shovel, lying blessedly close to her, and knew that she didn't have a moment to waste.

Reaching out, she grabbed the end of the wooden handle of the tool and flung the shovel, end-over-end, at the deadly, open mouth.

The tool spun in, slamming into the jaws' hair-trigger hinges, sideways, causing the gator to reflexively snap them shut against the handle.

As the gator shook its head and tried to work the shovel out of its maw, Marcie used the time to scramble to her feet and scurry up the curving, stony path towards sunlight and safety.

Whereupon, she collided with a hurrying George coming from the cave's entrance with a security detail.

"Marcie! What happened?" George asked, frantically. "I heard you screaming, so I came with security. What's going on?"

"Down there! _Alligator_...loose! The lake! It almost ripped me to pieces!" Marcie frantically sputtered. Then, she grabbed two handfuls of George's shirt in a rage and yelled in his face, "I thought you told me that those gates were locked!"

"They were," one of the two security guards who followed Mr. George said, almost defensively. "I don't know how they were _unlocked_. Did _you_ unlock them?"

Marcie didn't know what stunned her more, the near-death experience, or the stupidity of the guard's accusation. "You know what? I did!" she quipped in annoyance. "My day's just not complete, until I'm eaten by a wild animal! Are you related to Sheriff Bronson Stone, by any chance?"

"Never mind them, Marcie," George told her. "Are you okay?"

Marcie took a cleansing breath to try and ease away the shakes. "Yeah, thanks. Look, I took some mud samples from down there. I'm going to take them back to my hotel and do an analysis on them, to test a theory I have. Maybe there's something in it that'll shed some light on all of this."

"Well, I don't see any gators here," George said, peering into the dimness ahead. "I guess that's a good thing. C'mon, let me get you out of here."

He then turned to the two guards. "You two better get in touch with Mr. Blanchard about what happened here, and then get some wranglers down here to check for any "loose product" by the lakes."

"Yes, sir," said the other guard. Then, the pair marched back towards the entrance, followed closely by Marcie and George.

"I saw alligators coming at me, once before, today, on the tour bus. But there was nothing there. They were all illusions," Marcie admitted to the staff geologist. "If I'm still seeing things, then my fact-finding is questionable, at best. I'm not sure I can tell Mr. Blanchard anything. He probably wouldn't believe me if I did, and, to be honest, I don't think I would, either."

Marcie grimly thought back to the alligator that was, by now, hungrily roaming the dark depths of the mine. She hoped the mine workers would be able to deal with it, as she shivered from her close call. However, she couldn't help wondering if what she saw was actually real, in retrospect. It certainly looked real enough for her not to want to go back and verify the reptile's authenticity.

But if her clarity _was_ in doubt, then she dearly needed to start on her analysis, at once. If her theory proved correct, and she _did_ fall prey to some hallucinogenic mist, on the tour bus, and maybe its residue, in the cave, then it would go a long way in explaining whether she was actually seeing phantom alligators or not, and how Pretre du Marais was able to terrorize whole mines and a tour bus so easily.

George shrugged, sympathetically, as they all exited the mouth of the cave. "Well, if you need me to vouch for you, I will, but, for right now, let's just get the heck out of here."

"You don't have to tell me twice," said Marcie, thankful to see daylight.

She was soon thankful for the daylight in another way. When she lifted one of her hands to see how much it trembled, it allowed her to see a wide smudge of white on her palm, as if she touched moist paint.

She didn't remember anything white in the cave, or holding on to anything painted, but she decided to keep it to herself, in any event.

There was no sense in bringing it up, if it was trivially caused, she reasoned. And with all the excitement of late, it was quite possible that she could have done anything to get that.


	5. Chapter 5

"Are you sure that the engineers are okay with shutting this down?" Marcie asked the foreman from in front of the massive ventilation fan's grill.

"I'd have to say yes," the foreman said. "They weren't too keen with the idea, but when I told them that you have some carte blanche from the Blanchards, and that I'd keep an eye on ya, they seemed okay with it. Even though they did grumble a bit."

"Well, don't worry, it won't be long. I just need to see if what I suspect has happened," she said, taking a test tube and a cotton swab out from her jacket, approaching the grill and the closest, propeller-sized fan blade, and gently swiping their surfaces.

"What do you think  _did_  happen?"

"I think that Pretre du Marais set up some sort of release system for his powder, by the ventilation system, and then activated it, probably by remote control, to toxify the miners before he entered the caves. If he timed it right, he could have fooled everybody into thinking  _he_  was responsible for sending ghostly gators after them."

"I don't know," he grumbled, self-consciously. "After all that happened, you still think that they were illusions?"

"Of course," she said. "You wrote in your report that the priest directly dosed you with what you said was magic powder that called the alligators from beyond."

"I guess I did say that, didn't I?" the foreman said under his breath, slightly embarrassed of the flowery, yet fear-borne prose.

"In any event, soon after that, the entire mining crew suffered frightening visions that had them screaming from the caves."

"Yeah, but-" he said, trying to defend his earlier, unmanly behavior.

"One person couldn't have affected that many people, in so large an area, at the same time," she continued. "So, he must have introduced that powder of his just before he attacked you."

"Maybe," he huffed. Then, he asked her, as a way of shaking her chain of insufferable logic, "You don't believe in ghosts, do you?"

"I haven't seen anything to prove or disprove the existence of supernatural phenomena. If such evidence exists, and I happen to come across it, my opinion of their existence may change accordingly."

"In other words, no."

"Your words, not mine," she shrugged. "By the way, what was it you wanted to tell Mr. George about?"

"Well, I told him that the demolition teams were missing more EXP-9 demo charges."

"What are they? Explosives?"

"Yep. They're small, but expensive as all get out, because they pack a heck of a punch."

"When did you first notice them gone?" she asked.

"About four weeks ago, and I told Mr. Blanchard about it. Now, it looks like another shipment's gone. If they're missing, or worse, stolen, it'll eat into the company's profits to replace them," he told her. "I told George about it because it concerns him, too. He and the other geologists need them to explore the deeper caves. Besides, it wouldn't look so good to have explosives floating around town with serial numbers that could be traced to Blanchard Mines."

"Good point," she said, putting the swab into the test tube and then pocketing it. "I'm finished."

"Well, c'mon, then," the foreman said, turning from the ventilation equipment. "Let's get to the administration building. You can check out what the geologists are doing when they're not spelunking around here."

* * *

The admin building and its motorpool overlooked the vista of hills and mountains that made up the property of the Blanchard Mines.

Within, the foreman escorted Marcie to the building's Tunnel Monitoring Station, where eight geologists and engineers sat, partnered, two abreast, before four curved consoles positioned in an outwardly concentric arrangement from a large, central, ceiling-mounted monitor that split its display into four individual screens, each showing the 2-D image of a lake graphic from one of the four mines' caves that each geologist was assigned.

Amid the worker bee activity in the room, Marcie kept her attention mostly on George, who was supervising the four two-man teams, as the drilling team's leader, watching him work, and studying what he was doing from a respectable distance, so as not to disturb him.

A geologist tapped a button on his console and the lake graphic in his assigned cave flicked into view. Each graphic was connected to a thin web of blue lines that lead through the surrounding mountain or hill, and out towards the Source Swamps, indicating the typical iconography of a water-filled tunnel network.

A soft beep sounded from his station, George and Marcie noticed. The scientist had gotten an alert from that tunnel system's graphic. An obstruction had been found in one of the tunnels, marked on the main monitor with a blinking red x.

George studied the geologist's small console monitor, looked up, rolled his head around to get the kinks out of his neck, and noticed Marcie standing across the room.

"Oh, hey, Marcie," he said to her, gesturing to the imposing monitor hanging from the ceiling. "Check it out. Here's where the magic happens. Every two weeks we have to check the tunnels to make sure they aren't blocked."

He pointed to one of the mines on the main monitor. "That's where Pretre du Marais was last seen. Now, we have a blocked tunnel."

"That might not be a coincidence," she said, simply.

"What do you mean?"

She regarded the foreman. "I read all of the incident reports that you wrote to Mr. Blanchard concerning Pretre du Marais. The first attacks started three weeks ago."

"Yeah, he did start around three weeks ago," the foreman concurred. "Why?"

"You told me outside that you first noticed that your explosives were missing around  _four_  weeks ago," she said. "I could be wrong, but I think that our priest may have been the one who stole them."

"What for?" asked George.

"To destroy your mines, it looks like," Marcie surmised to the men. "Could he have swam into that tunnel and caved it in with explosive?"

"If he did, he's either gutsy or crazy," the foreman said, then he amended himself. "Well, crazier that usual. The lake could have had gators in it, and even if he's lucky and there were none, he's gotta find a good tunnel in all of that dark water. Not all of the tunnels are big enough for gators to swim through, and if he finds one, there's no guarantee that he wouldn't get stuck."

"Hmm," Marcie mused. "The alligators don't seem to have a problem getting through, but you're right. And not only that, if he's in the water when the explosives went off, he could be killed by the resulting pressure wave. I doubt he'd be that reckless."

"I doubt it, too," George agreed. "But why would he destroy the mines?"

"Isn't he traditionally a protector of the swamps?" she reasoned. "Maybe he sees the mines as an exploitation of the alligators and wants to shut them down. Since the other companies are having problems with him, too, it makes sense. He's probably sabotaging their mines, too, after he scares their miners out."

"Well, whether he had anything to do with it or not," George said, getting back to work. "It's blocked. I gotta clear it or the company makes no money."

"So, how do you clear it?" she asked.

"With our drillers," George answered. "Submersible excavators. We release them into the lakes and send them down into the underwater tunnels. They have front and rear cameras and GPS trackers, so we can see where they're going. When they meet an obstruction, we give them orders to drill right through it. When we need to send scientific probes through, the drillers have a storage compartment to release them."

"You guys sound like high-tech plumbers," Marcie said, jovially.

"Yeah, plumbers with a PhD's," George quipped back before addressing his team. "Okay, people. Start drilling."

The closest geologist reached over to one side of the console where a smaller, built-in monitor was paired with a small, rubber capped joystick. She lightly touched the joystick at a given direction, and the lit view on the smaller monitor, shifted, correspondingly.

Marcie strolled a little closer to her, quietly looking over her shoulder, and saw that she was, evidently, watching the proceedings through the driller's cameras, and indeed, was controlling its movements with the joystick.

The driller's tiny, forward cameras showed the headlight-illuminated top of its wide, conical, barbed drill bit, and, up ahead, at what looked to be the aftermath of some underwater landslide. A thick wall of loose stone stood in its way.

Just then, Marcie, and from a few feet away, George, could see the bit whirl into high-speed motion, kicking up a storm cloud of sediment as the driller surged forward and penetrated the center of the wall. Bits of stone and pebbles hit the sturdy cameras, as the drill devoured the wall's face, and then the view was quickly darkened by the forward section of the drilling machine being buried into the center mass of the obstruction.

However, the driller hadn't been defeated by the strength of the barrier, as Marcie discovered by looking up at the four-way split-screen on the main monitor. From the woman and her partner's screen quadrant, she could see that the GPS icon of her driller was still pushing ahead in its tunnel's red x, unabated.

Keeping her attention on the screen quadrant, because the view from the camera monitor was simply too indistinct, Marcie saw the x finally wink out. She looked down at the camera monitor again, and this time, she could see tunnel walls of natural stone clear again, with the occasional bits of plant or animal matter flowing freely past.

"And that's how it's done," George said with a satisfied sigh.

* * *

"Have you had time to enjoy the Pageant, yet?" George asked Marcie while waiting for the light to change, that early evening.

"Not with all of this running around I'm doing," she said. "But hopefully I'll help get this mystery solved before it ends. Maybe I'll bring back some souvenirs."

George accelerated his jeep through the avenue that entered the Tail Quarter, when the traffic light turned green again.

"I wouldn't worry, much. I was born and raised here," he said. "And I can tell you that the party is only going to get hotter as it goes on, so you might see something, yet."

"I hope so."

As they traveled through the quarter, it didn't seem like the party atmosphere had abated, even after the tour bus attack. That was all well and good for Marcie. The festive noises and colors were a welcome distraction from her cave misadventure.

She was grateful to be back in town. Grateful to have a chance again to be aware of everything, now. The mild, dying sunlight, the breezes that caressed her auburn, unkempt hair, the cacophony of businesses and tourism around her, the smell of the local cuisine nearby and the glitter and pomp of Pageant revelry. It was the beautiful, gaudy face of Gatorsburg she was contentedly taking in.

She didn't know why, but deep inside, Marcie could sense that this was an exciting time. Not just because of earlier incidents, but because something was changing before her.

The world felt like it stood on the cusp of a transition. It felt like nothing was greatly altered, at least, on levels the average person couldn't see. Yet, being here in Gatorsburg, Marcie was afforded a peculiar perception. Whenever she turned her head to look, that change grew more evident.

For every tourist-filled horse-cart that meandered, a squadron of motor scooters would putt by. For every old priest who strolled along his way, mindful of his office, there were clerics of even higher office using the Internet. For every neighborhood Art Nouveau and Art Deco, Renaissance Colonial, Gothic and Spanish-inspired building that stood in testament to the ages, there was, also, the occasional fast food franchise.

New vs. Old now became New embraces Old to become New again. Through Gatorsburg, she could see that the world was gradually recycling, reinventing herself. As inside, Marcie was feeling she must. And like the world, she was wondering how to do it, how far to push it, where would it lead and what would be the end result.

Thrilled, and maybe a little scared, she couldn't suppress the grin. It was an exciting time to live.

George's jeep had finished its ascent up Hill Street and idled by the front walkway of the Dancing Gator Hotel, allowing Marcie to step out.

"Thanks for bringing me back," she told him.

"No problem. Let me know if you find that hallucinogen in that mud," he said, putting his vehicle back in gear.

"Will do," Marcie said, then watched the jeep trundle back down the winding hillside street and back out into the traffic of the growing night.

She walked into the foyer, waved to Gunther at the front desk, and went up the stairs to her floor, mentally preparing herself for the rigorous dissemination of her clues ahead. She only hoped that the scent of chemical detective work wouldn't rub Greta, or the other hotel guests the wrong way. Hotel rooms were not historically known for their use as makeshift laboratories.

Marcie worked well into the night, and even though she wasn't disturbed by anyone, she soon found that her precious clues had her asking more questions than finding more answers.

She scowled through her goggles as she sat in deep thought on the floor, staring at the bubbling, flowing, smoking and controlled burning chemistry set rig in front of her, a half-eaten bowl of stew beside her, and a dog-eared notepad full of hastily scribbled chemical notations on her cross-legged lap.

Slim fingers held the liquefied contents of her samples in a test tube, which she swished absently as she glanced at the boxy, old, green spectroscope that was plugged by the wall.

It was tricky to find a way to pack the elderly spectroscope for her trip, but it was achieved, cushioning it among the folded panties.

She leaned over and fed it a measured drop of the sample and it began to give its low, customary hum as it broke up the watery mud sample Marcie gave it into its individual chemical components.

"Well, it's just you and me, tonight. Feels like every night, it seems," Marcie sighed, forlornly. "Oh, well. What do you have for me?"

The spectroscope's glowing green monitor began scrolling words, percentages and shaded bar graphs down its length and Marcie mentally took in the list of components it displayed with a dismayed look. From the information it gave, once it isolated the water, earth and trace elements, she had to admit that she was well and truly stumped as to what it was.

"Geez, what is this stuff?" she asked herself, jotting down the chemical notation when she set the spectroscope to renaming it, thus. "That's some major molecular chainage, there. If he made this powder himself, then this guy must be a  _serious_  potionmaster. Nowhere near my league, of course, but still."

She stood and walked over to her room window, peering out into the obsidian night and listening to the distant boom of fireworks. In her mind, she was already beginning to see this criminal as a worthy rival, chemistry-wise, and working on fantasy scenarios involving her undoing his hallucinogen with a curative counter-agent all her own.

With an assured smile, she softly patted her jacket where her capsules lay. With her brains, she was more than confident that she could take him any day of the week.

"I wish I knew where his lab was. He won't be needing it anymore, once I solve this mystery, and I'm sure I can find a good home for all of that sweet equipment," she mused, luxuriating in the thought of completely ransacking his gear as part of his impending punishment. But her mind was already chiding her. She hadn't solved anything, yet, and she had along way to go before she would pillage and plunder like a proper nerdy pirate.

"Ah, well, mystery-solving, now. Cannibalization of lab equipment, later," she said with a darkly eager grin.


	6. Chapter 6

In his tastefully opulent office, Richard Blanchard leaned back in his leather chair and pretended to listen to the smug businessman who sat across from his wide, dark, wooden desk.

"I'm not surprised that you would still go to the ball tonight."

"Aren't you?" asked Richard.

"Of course, but that's only because I'm not busy trying to clean up a mess that didn't need to be made if you had a better handle on things, security-wise."

"You still think we had something to do with that nutcase running around?" Richard asked, tiring of the level of defense he found himself raising, as of late. "He's been wrecking  _our_  mines, too, y'know?"

"Bah!" the businessman waved away. "You should know, Richard, that the rest of Big Gator is thinking of suing you and your mother for this nonsense."

If the businessman thought that that exchange would finally rattle Richard somehow, he was surprised to look into the man's eyes and see its polar opposite.

Richard stared back and nodded slowly with a look of amused enlightenment to all of this posturing by the competition over the wayward priest. "So, you goons think that by winning some trumped-up lawsuit, you'll seize our assets and can pick my mother's company clean, like the vultures you are, huh? I'm not surprised. It's the only way you business school dropouts can hope to get a leg up on us."

Before the businessman had a chance to defend against the accusation, a soft knocking came from the heavy office door, which then opened slowly.

Marcie obsequiously poked her head through. "Hello, Mr. Blanchard," she said to him from across the room. "Have I come at a bad time, sir?"

Richard waved her in. "Not at all, Marcie. I was just about to show Mr. Dennis the door." He then added, with quiet menace, "With my foot, if need be."

"No need for that," Dennis said, getting up from his seat. "You've already shown me enough of that famous Blanchard hospitality. I have to go get ready for my costume fitting, anyhow. I'll see you tonight, Richard."

"Until tonight, then," Richard grumbled at Dennis' back, as the businessman walked past Marcie and left the office.

"Tonight?" Marcie asked, approaching the front of Richard's desk.

"Oh, he's just talking about the Businessman's Ball," he explained. "It's a costume ball that's held every year during Pageant. Only the local captains of industry are invited and will be there in disguise. Oh, we'd have a fine ol' time. One time, a competitor didn't recognize my mother, thinking she was his partner in disguise, and he blabbed about a secret deal he had all set up with Herculoid Luggage. Needless to say, we snapped that contract up lickety-split. Ha!"

Marcie gave a small, noncommittal shrug at all of that. Business intrigue wasn't her forte. "I see."

"Anywho, what can I do for you. Do you need to see any more incident reports?" he asked.

Marcie brought up a hand in cessation. "No thanks, Mr. Blanchard. I think I read enough, but I think I have something on how Pretre du Marais is scaring your men and slowing production."

That perked up his attention. "How?"

"He's dosing your men with some kind of hallucinogenic powder. I analyzed some mud from the mine where he attacked your men. The same substance was also found on the fan blades and grill of the ventilation system that fed into the mine, meaning that he introduced the powder into the cave before he arrived."

"Can you prove this?"

"If you like, you can have another chemist take samples from the mud and fan blades," she offered. "I believe that you'll get the same result, sir."

"Unless the other chemist finds what my grandfather kept telling me is down there for years," Richard joked in wistful non-sequitor.

"What?" That perked up  _her_  attention.

"Oh, it's just some nonsense he would tell me when I was a lad, and he ran the company," he said, dismissively. "He told me that the government came to him, long ago, asking him if they could store some things in his caves. He told them he could, so they did."

"What did they put in there?" Marcie asked, intrigued.

Richard shrugged. "I haven't the foggiest. It could've been anything. Secret files, prototype weapons, bomb shelters. That sort of thing. When I was younger, I'd sometimes screw up the courage to go into the caves. In all my years of spelunking and crawling around, I haven't found a single wingtip, much less anything worth talking about."

Marcie stood silent for a few moments, running what she heard over and over in her mind. When she finally noticed the quiet, she awkwardly resumed the discussion. "Well, I'm going to find Mr. George and tell him what I found, sir."

"Alright, then. If you need anymore help from me or the staff, don't hesitate to ask."

"Thanks, Mr. Blanchard." Then Marcie turned heel, and strode from the office.

* * *

Marcie looked admiringly at the side tunnels that looked like alcoves, as she crept cautiously through the deeper lengths of the mine. The softly echoing sounds of water dripping into small trapped pools and the low moans of breezes flowing through the tunnels met her attentive ears. This was the lonely, yet soothing music of the mines.

She looked up at the ceilings, more for safety than anything else, and was blown away at the vast structure and form of the stalagmites that hung above. It was like walking through a cathedral carved from nature itself.

Being a chemist, Marcie could appreciate the knowledge that it was the slightly acidic water she was hearing, as it dripped off in the distance, that was carving the design of the place. That chemistry was the true architect of the caverns.

Marcie gave a guilty, cautious look behind her for any phantom followers, tuning out the sounds of subterranean nature to better hear them. None were found, to her relief.

"I hope Mr. George doesn't know I'm down here," she fretted to herself. "The last thing I need is to be stripped of my Visitors badge for this."

A sudden low moan from the wind made Marcie focus on where she was and look forward into the awaiting unknown of the caves ahead, and what might reside in them.

"No, that's not accurate," she gulped. "The last thing I need is to be stripped of my *flesh. I better keep my eyes peeled for any gators down here."

But then, she had to remind herself that she also needed to keep her eyes peeled for clues, as that was the reason she found herself in this situation.

"What a longshot," she fretted. "Going to the center of the earth, it feels like, just to follow up on a hunch based on some CEO's bedtime story. The things I do to solve a mystery."

She walked cautiously ahead, turning her head in all directions, searching and sweeping the path with the light from the lamp set in her hardhat. She was hoping to find something, anything, in these twilight passages, but the deeper she ventured and the more time that had passed, she feared nothing would soon be forthcoming.

Not only that. Marcie also knew that the length of time she spent in these far-off caverns was inversely proportional to the amount of nerve she possessed. And that nerve was beginning to break as she crept another few yards deeper into the underground.

"I better head back," she shakily said to herself, wondering if she really felt that time was being wasted, or if she was just plain terrified, when the light of her hardhat shone on something up ahead. Something that looked artificial, and thus, out of place, here.

With fear momentarily forgotten, Marcie jogged over to the object and picked it up off the wet, gritty ground.

It looked like a panel, broken off on one end, possibly the side of something larger, but it didn't have any markings, once she wiped the grainy mud from its surface.

She wondered why it was here, if it had nothing to show what it was. Was it something that the government left down here, years ago? Since it looked sectional, what did it go to?

Curious and hopeful for more information, Marcie turned the panel over, and there, covered in mud, were precious words. Wiping them clear, Marcie could make out stenciled, weather-beaten letters that spelled "U.S. Army. H.E.N. G..."

Marcie grinned. The government  _did_  leave something behind, and hopefully, this would have something to do with the attacks on the mines and the minds of everyone else.

All she needed to do was find out what H.E.N. G... stood for.

Any further questions she had were silenced to what she suddenly heard. Two more proximate sounds made Marcie's skin tingle with apprehension. The sound of loose rock dislodged and the noisy herald of a heavy stride, but due to the ambient echo of the chamber she was in, she couldn't pinpoint a direction where it came from.

"What was that?" she asked herself, stopping completely still, hoping doing just that would be enough to hide her from whatever was lurking about. "Please don't let it be some eleven foot reptile with jaws that could crush a car door. I'd really hate that."

Whatever she hoped wouldn't be there, couldn't match the shock she got from what was actually there. She whirled around to face the strange, skulled visage of the wayward priest staring into her with his ethereal green eyes.

"Don't worry," he intoned, his voice echoing quietly behind the animal skull mask, and adding more chill to the caves. "I'm no alligator, though you may wish I were one before too long, mon petite!"

"Pretre du Marais!" Marcie gasped, watching him approach at a seemingly leisurely walk. Where could she go, in any case.

"Oui, fil, and I'm afraid I can't let you see ze sunlight again, not after what you found here in ze caves."

Marcie didn't know what he meant, until she remembered the clue she found. "What, the board? I didn't read what was on it, or anything. In fact, I thought it was just litter and I was being a good citizen and picking it up."

"You don't live in Gatorsburg, my little  _tourist_."

Marcie nervously shrugged away her lie. "Doesn't mean I don't care. I'm very civic-minded, y'know? I mean, if we can't keep our caves clean, then what hope do we have for our cities?"

The wayward priest approached her. "Clean streets will be ze least of your worries, cher."

Marcie didn't wait around to think of something pithy. Instead, she tore further into the tunnels, since Pretre du Marais was blocking the way back to civilization.

With the priest running close enough that she could hear him pursuing her, Marcie was forced to make a tactical decision. As long as her hardhat's lamp remained on, he could find her, but if she could find a side tunnel, douse the light, duck into it and stay quiet, then maybe, just maybe, she could fool him into looking elsewhere. But first, she needed a tunnel.

"I've gotta hide," she said to herself.

Up ahead, she could see the mouth of what looked to be a large cavern. If she could find a place to hide inside, fast enough, then this plan might work.

Marcie ran inside what was, indeed, a large cavern, whose expanse was bi-leveled by a floor that separated another lower floor, a pit, by an embankment. Looking around, she saw that there were stalagmites for hiding, but she wouldn't have time to find one suitable enough to conceal her before the priest overtook her. She'd have to slow down and confuse him, somehow.

She stopped and heard footsteps rushing towards her. With a quick move of her hand, Marcie reached into her jacket and pulled out a Discourager capsule. It proved to be just in time, as Pretre du Marais jogged into the cavern at a speed slow enough to allow him time to search for, and find Marcie standing by the edge of the embankment, watching him enter.

With a laugh, he went back into high-gear, homing in on the girl, hands eager to commit ill and fatal deeds.

Marcie's hand whipped down, throwing the capsule into the ground. It broke open, quickly filling the space between the two opponents with blinding foul-smelling smoke. However, just as Marcie was about to duck behind the closest stalagmite, the unexpected happened.

Instead of stopping Pretre du Marais in his tracks, the wayward priest exploded out from the acrid smoke with a triumphant roar, arms outstretched to capture. Yet, so eager was he to grab Marcie, he couldn't judge how close he was to her from inside the smoke.

His body rammed solidly into hers, as she tried to evade, knocking her back and causing her to slip over the edge of the embankment with a terrified cry.

The priest managed to right himself before he, too, followed her down in the depths. He looked by his feet and found the dropped panel that Marcie left behind. He picked it with smug victory.

Far below, pebbles and grainy dust rained softly on Marcie's stunned form. Above her, the priest bore his ghostly green stare through his skull mask down into the pit, admiring his sudden handiwork.

"It's a good thing you picked zhis cave and fell into ze pit, mon petite," he said, recognizing this particular stretch of caverns. "Ol' Whitey hasn't had anyone to eat in a donkey's age. So, I should say that it was a good thing...for him."

With a playful heft of the board in his hand, he turned from the feast below that was to come, and walked away from the pit's ledge with a sly chuckle.

"Bon appitit, Monsieur Blanc!" his voice called out from the caves.

* * *

A little time had passed before Marcie's brain slowly started to come to terms with what her senses were just beginning to relay to her.

Rough...

Rough feeling...

That thought bubbled up from Marcie's awakening brain. It was telling her that her skin was pressing into something hard and gravelly.

She opened her eyes gradually and couldn't make anything out in the gloom, except the awkward tilt of the ground caused by her lying almost face-down in the dirt, and a fuzzy, indistinct glow from a light a few feet away.

"Mmm...can't see," she muttered.

She wiped her eyes, wondering why she was having such a hard time focusing while moving towards what she realized was her hard hat's lamp still shining. The closer she came to the light, the more haloed and glaring it appeared before her.

Then, she noticed a comfortable, familiar presence missing from her face.

"My glasses!" Marcie fretted, nervously patting and feeling around the surrounding ground. "I can't see without my glasses. Where are they?"

A hand swept near the spot where she landed and touched the edge of her dislodged spectacles. With a grateful swipe, Marcie sat them back on her face, her eyesight improving immediately, despite the twilight setting she found herself in.

She stood and looked around to get her bearings. "That's better. Now, where am I?"

Marcie placed the hard hat back on her head and turned back to where she had landed to look at the high, stone walls of this rocky depression. She then remembered hearing the priest saying something while she was in the dark, trying to regain her lucidity.

"What did he say? A pit?" she mused. "That's no good. Better bounce outta here." She started to walk, and then her foot stepped on something hard and shaped.

"What's this?" She looked down, pointing the hard hat lamp onto a loose collection of odds and ends scattered across the nearby width of the ground. The lamp shone on what appeared to be a number of surviving, antiquated flares, pickaxes with rusted heads and old, cracked wooden handles, dry, frayed lengths of rope with weak fibers exposed like brittle split ends, dented lanterns with broken lenses...and, what she could just make out, on its side by a far corner of the pit, a cracked keg of gunpowder.

"Looks like a general store died in here," she observed. "Must've been an old storage place for miners."

Curiosity taking hold of her at the moment, Marcie walked a little further out onto the pit, where, it seemed, there was an area along the far walls that was darker than where she was, like a black hole held up before her.

Her foot stepped on something again, but it felt thin and actually crunched when her weight was set upon it. She lifted her foot and saw something that confirmed her feelings about this place and why she needed to stop sightseeing and leave on the spot.

Below her were the separated, skeletal remains of alligators, their collective bones scattered about, brittle, weathered and long hollowed of marrow by the creatures of the caves.

That, alone, made the teen stop in fearful indecision, but then, seeing the familiar, yet gnawed on, shapes of cast-off human bones, tattered overalls and dented hard hats, made her freeze with sharp deduction of what must have happened.

Something in this place, something far meaner than she or these erstwhile victims suspected, lived in here, and was probably watching her in the deep shadows.

"Okay, not a storage place for old miners. A  _resting place_ for them!" she gasped.

A growling hiss was heard in the dark, up ahead, and Marcie backed away.

"That sounds...decidedly hungry," she said, hoping she wouldn't see what made the sound that made her skin shiver.

Marcie made it back to the area of old items in time to see a silhouetted shape, low, heavy and imposing, slowly move furtively in the darkness. She wanted to turn and attempt to climb the walls and effect an escape, but caution forced her to keep her eyes on whatever came from the shadows.

Unexpectedly, her hard hat's lamp shut off, closing Marcie in utter darkness and rocketing her heart into her tightening throat. She snatched it off of her head and began slapping her hand against it to fix it, backing away as she did so.

"Crap! It must've been damaged when I fell. C'mon, c'mon! Work!" she begged the protective helmet, knowing that the longer she banged on the hat, the better whatever it was she spied would get a fix on her, especially in the dark.

Finally, the lamp flickered, then went into a sepia glow that gradually steadied into a stable brilliance, just as Marcie backed into one of the walls of the pit. She nervously held the hat out at arm's length and pointed its shaking light in the direction she last saw the movement.

She almost dropped it upon seeing the master of the pit. A huge, chalk white alligator, far larger than any specimen she had run into, real or imagined, crawled out of the dark mouth of a smaller cave set in the far wall across from her.

"That must be Ol' Whitey, then," Marcie said to herself, rattled. "Let hear it for truth in advertising!"

She kept the light on the saurian while she returned to the spot where she fell from the ledge, the ledge she so desperately wanted to be standing on right now.

Putting the hat back on, Marcie reached up against the wall, looking for any crevasses or smaller ledges she could grip and step on, but even though the walls were stony and rough, any handholds were simply too small and close to the surface for her to find purchase.

Knowing better than to keep her back on an approaching predator, no matter how slow it seemed to be going, Marcie turned back to keep her eyes back on it, while trying to think of a way out.

"Too steep! And if I keep making noise like this, I'm gator bait," the teen hissed in frustration, failing to think of a way to avoid the gator and climb out. Her lamplight swept across the ground, as she attempted to follow the alligator's distant progress, and shone on the discarded objects.

Her eyes suddenly grew wide in the midst of a brainstorm. "That's it!" she cried out. "Let's see if I can make something outta this junk!"

She quietly jogged to where she remembered the broken keg of old gunpowder was lying, and poured some of it on the ground, smoothing the pile out flat with her foot. Then, she reached down, took up a length of old rope and rolled it into the gunpowder, kneading the powder into the rope's threads, turning it into an abnormally long, charcoal-colored, makeshift fuse.

She then took the roughly impregnated rope and carefully tied a number of the old flares she found, along its length at measured intervals, by their heads. Once done, she looped the rope into a wide lasso, although it now it resembled a crude necklace of flares.

Putting that down, Marcie went to the old pickaxe, grabbed another length of rope, and tied the rope to the head of the pickaxe, as the pale gator began to move closer to her.

"Crap! He's coming!" she gasped.

Marcie put down the pickaxe and ran back to get the flare lasso, saying, as she swung the hempen loop in preparation for a toss.

"Well, he's hoping," she told herself to calm her arm. "Gitty up, boy!"

Marcie inhaled and carefully tossed the lasso at the gator. It awkwardly slipped over the beast's large head, making the gator stop walking in favor of wondering what it was that the morsel threw at it. Its head moved from side to side, trying to dislodge the loop and hissing in confusion.

Marcie then dropped the other end of the lasso to the ground and reached into her jacket. Her slim fingers pulled out a lighter, flicked it into life, and placed it on the end of the rope.

The tiny flame ignited the gunpowder-infused rope, causing a sputtering, smoking ball of fire to travel along the length of the rope with disquieting slowness, as Ol' Whitey, deciding that the lasso proved to be no true threat, proceeded to stalk Marcie with more gusto, while she backed away along the rough walls of the pit.

The giant alligator was, distressingly, almost within charging range when the smoky flame reached the lasso's loop and set off the first flare.

A spike of heat bloomed, burning the more sensitive bottom of its throat, and a blinding sunrise rose from under its head, causing the dark-accustomed reptile to forget Marcie instantly for this new threat. Its primitive brain was quickly assaulted in a sensory overload that didn't help drive it into making the kill, which made it more than a little frustrated.

Then, the fiery trail crept up along the lasso, igniting flare after flare, in painful succession, turning the lasso into a blazing, confusing, tormenting, sight-robbing necklace that made Ol' Whitey buck and swing, and snap its jaws, and swing its tail to fight an enemy it had never encountered before.

Marcie, gratefully satisfied to see that her distraction work so well, and seeing an opening, reached down for the pickaxe, grabbed the tool, and tossed it high at the ledge. The heavy digger landed beyond the ledge with a promising clang.

Marcie gave it a hopeful pull, and the tool came down, landing with a thud by her feet. With a snatch, she grabbed the handle and tossed it up again, this time with more force, hoping it would hook onto something, anything.

A yank that caused the tool to descend, almost hitting her on the head, dashed her hopes a second time. She glanced over at Ol' Whitey. Although it was still thoroughly occupied, the first few flares had died, meaning that it wouldn't be long before Marcie would be satisfying the appetite that the gator was, so far, working up.

Fighting down the fear that was rising as the flares' collective light was beginning to fade, Marcie gave the pickaxe another impassioned throw up over the ledge.

It clanged once more, but with an experimental tug, the rope pulled happily taut. Somewhere above, the pickaxe's curved head found purchase somewhere beyond the ledge, and so, without another delay, Marcie began slowly climbing the walls of the pit, step by unsteady step and hand pull by shaky hand pull, praying that the rope, the pickaxe, and the knot she tied to it would hold until she reached the top.

Eight feet...

Four...

Two feet...

Almost...

Marcie reached up and swung a hand around for one more pull, and then, finally hauled herself over the ledge, rolling over on her back, winded, but thankful to be out of the gator's lair.

She eventually righted herself and looked around the ground where she thought she last stood before her fall, but couldn't find the panel.

"Ugh! He took my clue," Marcie groaned.

Then, her hardhat light shone on something resting on the moist, rocky ground.

Crawling over to it, Marcie couldn't believe her luck. In her hands was a tiny, plastic flash drive.

A major break in the case? She considered the happy possibilities as she could still hear the loud popping and hissing of antiquated flares that played in chorus to the frantic hisses of the terrified saurian.

"I knew you'd see the light, Whitey," Marcie quipped, as she hefted the drive in her hand and stared at the dark, stony ceiling above her.

"Now, let's see if  _I_ can find the light at the end of this tunnel," she said, thinking both literally and metaphorically.

* * *

Marcie wearily exited from another side tunnel that she wandered into and thought, with some concern, that she could be lost. Corridors of ancient stone and branching tunnels continued to meet her, that either angled off into dead-ends or meandered off into other, deeper chambers that may have housed other unknown dangers.

Then she saw it, and smelled it. The work lights of the gator processing area and the scent of the lakes that the areas were annexed to.

"Thank goodness! I made it!" Marcie cried out, almost breaking into tears at the welcome sight.

"Is someone there?" a feminine voice called from by the lakes.

Quickly Marcie responded, making sure that a member of civilization acknowledged her. "Yes! It's me, Marcie Fleach!"

"Marcie?" The woman asked, watching the teen approach with a grateful look on her face. "What are you doing back there?"

"Oh! Hi, there, Miss McAfee," Marcie greeted the scientist upon recognizing her. "I was just looking for clues and I got lost."

McAfee shook her head. "Looking for clues? Count yourself lucky that you found your way back here. Too many people have been lost wandering around these caves over the years and never came back."

"I can believe it," said the girl, mentally reliving what she went through. "I just ran into Pretre du Marais and he introduced me to a friend of his."

"He was here?"

"Oh, yeah," Marcie sighed. "By the way, have you seen him come through here?"

"Sorry, I haven't seen anybody come through here," McAfee shrugged, turning back to tend to her lakeside equipment. "Anyway, I came in here to check on the lakes' water levels. In fact, it should happen anytime, now."

"What?" Marcie asked.

"The cave floods," the scientist explained. "The weatherman says it's going to rain soon. When it does, every cave lake in every mountain is going to flood. Good thing, too."

"How come?"

"Well, the underground tunnel systems that runs from the wetlands to all the various caves keeps the water levels normal in the swamp. Gatorsburg sit on lowlands, the swamps lie outside the town, on slightly elevated land. Whenever it rains, instead of the swamps flooding, the excess water flows through the underground tunnels and into the caves' lakes, overflowing and flooding the caves. Miners stop working when this happens. When the rains stop, the floodwaters from the caves eventually recedes, and the miners will be able to work in them again."

Marcie nodded, understanding the significance of the tunnels. Then, she asked, "Well, what would happen if all of the tunnels were blocked?"

McAfee frowned at that. "That would be bad.  _Biblically_  bad. If enough of the tunnels were obstructed, then, if it rained again, there will be nowhere for the excess water to go. The swamps would flood and the run-off would spill out, run down the hills and flood into Gatorsburg. But that's a worse-case scenario, though."

The woman looked at the dawning anxiety that crossed Marcie's face and asked suspiciously, "Why do you ask?"

"Because," Marcie said, her expression becoming more worrying. "I think Pretre du Marais may get more than he bargained for. Whether he knows it or not, sabotaging the mines to save the alligators will do more than destroy this town's livelihood...it'll destroy the town!"


	7. Chapter 7

Marcie parked her father's car in the downtown parking lot of Blanchard Mines' office building, flashed her visitor's card at the appropriate security, and rode an express elevator up to the Mr. George's office. There was much to impart.

Marching down the hall towards the geologist's door, she gave a thought to what kind of action would have to be implemented to stop the priest. Something to do with those driller probes came to mind. Perhaps Mr. George would be open-minded to consider a teen-ager's idea, if he didn't come up with it first.

Marcie shook such a notion from her mind as she approached the door. What did it matter who came up with the solution, if it could save the life of an entire town.

She knocked on the door, and upon impact, it swung slowly open.

Dismayed, Marcie called in from the doorway. "Mr. George?"

From the threshold, she could begin to see, with the door's parting, the cluttered aftermath of the room's private destruction within.

Furniture was upended, paperwork carpeted the floor, and knick-knacks and personal effects were scattered to the four winds and littered the place. A royal mess, by any estimation.

And a disturbing one. Why was this so? Was Mr. George attacked, if he was unlucky enough to be here when it happened?

She took another look at the destruction around her as she gingerly entered. It didn't look like the end result of the random thrashings of a struggle. Some of the room would have still been somewhat intact. No, everything was dislodged. Flipped over, as if being searched in great haste.

"Mr. George?" Marcie called out, again, hoping to hear an answer from some makeshift hiding place, but she heard nothing.

Looking down to avoid stepping on some of the loose paperwork, Marcie noticed something odd on the floor. A single red-tipped feather. Then the answer came to her with a dread obviousness.

Pretre du Marais. It had to have been.

The words Marcie next noticed, written in disturbing red on a nearby wall, confirmed it.

"Bring me the flash drive," she read. "If you want to keep Georgie-boy alive."

"Great," Marcie fretted. "If I don't give it back to that crazy priest, who knows what he'll do to Mr. George? Something to do with gators not having been fed in a long while, I'm betting. Maybe Mr. George left some clue for me to find him."

Spying the back of a turned-over computer monitor on the geologist's badly disordered desk, she quickly went over to it. The monitor's dark face was cracked and useless.

Looking around the cluttered desktop, she moved some stationary out of the way and saw, partially buried below, one whole corner of a desk blotter, its upper corner pocket stuffed with business cards.

Marcie was suddenly struck with a hunch, or, at least, a plan of action. She pulled out the stack of cards from the corner and stuffed them in her pocket. They might give her some clue or insight about George's whereabouts, later.

Knowing how awkward it would be to explain why she was poking around in a ransacked office, Marcie reflexively ducked down and hid in the leg space of the desk as quietly as she could, and waited.

The tinny sound of a voice reporting from a walkie-talkie heralded the entrance of a security guard, on his rounds, as he stepped into the room. Instantly, he lifted his radio up and reported his findings as he walked carefully through the debris.

As Marcie listened to the radio chatter and the guard's responses, she regretted hiding as fast as she did, and realized that the only reason that she could hear the conversation so clearly was because the guard had started strolling closer to the desk. If his curiosity prompted him to do a thorough check around the desk...

Gauging that the voices were coming from the front of the desk, Marcie shuffled into position and slowly raised her head from behind the desk. With her eyes almost level with the desktop, she saw that the guard was still conversing on the radio with his back to her, but he still fidgeted from his position. He could still turn back to the desk and approach it from behind, if he wanted.

Her brain screamed for a diversion. Looking down on the floor around her, she soon found one. A small silver ball sat by her feet, one of a set of balls from one of those small momentum devices that she would absently take notice of, clicking away, in other offices.

Time was running out. She plucked the ball up and as she could hear the man coming around one side of the desk, Marcie quickly and quietly extended from the leg space towards the other side of the desk and tossed the ball out into the office.

The guard suddenly stopped his approach in Marcie's direction and turned his head attentively to the sound of something bouncing and banging against the furniture and far corner of the room.

He moved over to the disturbance, calling out for anyone in the office to come out, while he checked around the area of the office that sound came from.

Another squawk of chatter from the guard's radio compelled him to finally leave the undone office, closing the door behind him.

Marcie carefully stood from behind the desk with a sigh of relief.

"That was too close," she breathed. "I better tell Mr. Blanchard. He's gonna want to hear this."

She went to the door and opened it slowly, checking up and down the hall for the stalwart security guard. The hall was empty.

She slipped quietly from the office, reached the elevator, and rode up to the president's floor.

* * *

Mr. Blanchard's secretary sat in her station outside the president's office hard at work. So engaged was she, that she hadn't noticed Marcie come into the office until it was to late.

"Those kittens sure look cute, don't they?" Marcie asked from in front of the woman's desk, glancing at the back of her computer monitor.

"They sure do," the woman agreed without missing a beat before she realized her gaffe. She jumped in fright at her realization that it was a stranger before her, her cell phone flying clumsily from surprised, guilty hands.

Upon recognizing the teen whom she kept seeing coming and going to see Mr. Blanchard these days, the secretary breathed a grateful sigh. "Whoa. I thought you were the boss. Anyway, how do you know what's on my computer?"

"Your volume's turned down, but not low enough. I heard meowing when I came over to your desk," Marcie explained as she bent down and retrieved the cell phone for her, showing her the playful, multi-colored screen. "Can't be as interesting as the video game app you were playing with when I came in, though."

Embarrassed thoroughly by her slacking, the secretary took the phone from the girl. "Thanks," she said, sheepishly. "What can I do for you?"

"Mr. George's office had just ransacked and I believe he's been kidnapped," Marcie told her. "I need to speak to Mr. Blanchard."

"Wow. Really? That's a shame," said the secretary, matter-of-factly, as if she hadn't grasp the urgency of the situation. "I always thought Mr. George was kinda cute. Anyway, Mr. Blanchard's not here now. He had to leave early to get ready to go to that fancy party over at the Jadescale Hall he goes to every year. What is it? The Billionaire's Ball?"

"I thought it was The Businessman's Ball," Marcie corrected her.

"Whatever," the secretary shrugged, indifferently. "I can call the police, if you want."

Marcie nodded, turning and heading back to the doorway to leave. "That would be great. I gotta go."

"Hey!" the woman called out. "Where are you going?"

"I've gotta make sure that gators aren't the only thing left of Gatorsburg!" Marcie answered, and then departed.

* * *

Snapper's Cybercafé and Souvenir Shop sat on one side of a busy downtown street that was closed off for parades.

She swept her gaze along the tourists and other out-of-towners who came to the shop to buy alligator knick-knacks and Gatorsburg postcards, or locals who needed to use the wi-fi facilities and get a cup of joe. All of it was a garish mish-mash of business models, conveniently high-tech, tacky, cheap, but in the grand scheme of things, it was sufficient enough.

From the window by her table, Marcie could see the various colored floats drift by like gaudy ships, accompanied by loud, raucous zydeco and pied, prancing krewes. She soon took her eyes from the momentary distractions and settled back to her laptop and called up Goggle.

Typing the words 'U.S. Army H.E.N…G' into the search bar brought forth a distressingly small number of articles on the subject. Because of that, Marcie hoped for the best and dove into every website to read them all.

A few minutes into the search, Marcie could only find a few mentions and fewer links.

"Come on. Give me something," she fretted while clicking a link that looked promising.

Another website, a military one appeared, and her eyes scanned the list of contents displayed. A section that related to old and discontinued experimental weapons held her attention for a second.

Then, a hunch flashed in her head so quick, she had to stop momentarily. The board that 'U.S. Army H.E.N…G' was stenciled on was weathered and old and stopped at a particular one.

She clicked the section's link and was greeted by a list of weapon names in alphabetical order. Heading over to "H," Marcie found four words that made her smile as brightly as the sun.

_Hallucinogenic Enemy Neutralization Grenade_. The article was from years back, but what was written was vital to her here-and-now.

Originally to be the start of a series of portable, non-lethal, anti-personnel weapons that was to put fear into the enemy so that wouldn't fight, it was discontinued because, simply put, the army felt that guns could put fear into the enemy already.

"So that's what he did. Ha! I had a feeling he wasn't a real chemist. He must have found the grenades, took the powder out, and used it for his own ends," Marcie surmised with a smirk, thinking back to what Mr. Blanchard said about the army storing things in his mines, and the fact that Pretre took the crate board that was obviously part of the crate that held the found grenades.

"Okay, that part's done," she said, pulling out the flash drive from her jacket pocket. "Now, to see why this is so important about this drive. I hope it doesn't have any nasty surprises for me."

Plugging the drive into her laptop's USB port, the computer displayed a window with a list of folders. Each folder was given a name that felt vague to Marcie, like she had heard some of the names before in conversation, but didn't decide to prioritized them in memory then.

It was only when she saw a folder named Blanchard, that recollection kicked in and she began to realize what the other names were. But she needed to confirm it to her satisfaction.

Clicking the Blanchard folder open, she saw that the contents of the folder were a series of detailed map images, displayed and numbered 1 to 4.

Bringing up the first of the maps, she saw that it read Mine One. It was a detailed map of the interior of one of Blanchard Mines' caves, its lakes and its ever-branching tunnel system. Some of the tunnels were marked with a red x's, making what she saw surprisingly familiar.

Marcie blinked in recognition. It was the same kind of visual she saw when Mr. George and the others cave engineers worked on clearing the tunnels in the Blanchard Mines' Tunnel Monitoring Station. How did Pretre du Marais get his hands on info like that?

She left the Blanchard folder and checked out the others. It was the same as before. Map images of caves, subterranean lakes and their submerged tunnels. The priest had somehow scoped out the mines of not only Blanchard, but also the competition, as well.

This explained the specificity and focus of the attacks, since he had foreknowledge of the tunnels ahead of time, and could choose which ones were critical to the regulation of water levels both in the caves and, ultimately, the Source Swamps.

Curiosity prompted her to take a look at the last folder on the list, one marked "Desmond." Once she opened it, Marcie saw only a single map as its content.

Enlarging it revealed a different looking map, that of a residential section of the town's upscale Middle Quarter, along with a singular tunnel that wound its way from the direction of the swamps into a pond that lay in the shadow of a mansion that shared the property. The mansion was marked with a red circle and the name "Desmond" over it.

Desmond. Marcie suddenly remembered seeing the name, vaguely. The appearance of it struck her, and she knew right then that it wasn't coincidental. A connection was forming clearly.

Then it hit her. She reached into her jacket pocket and produced the business cards that she took from George's office.

On top of the stack, she found a glossy card that proclaimed "Desmond." Desmond Real Estate. A major clue, she began to believe.

It was then that Marcie also began to notice that the ambient luminosity of the sky had lessened somewhat. Glancing out the window, she could see a thin blanket of overcast start to give the festivities outside a slight darkness to them.

A distance kettle drum sound of thunder punctuated the threat of imminent flood, so Marcie quickly closed down her workstation and left the cafe.

She decided that she had a party to crash.


	8. Chapter 8

Built in the earliest age of Gatorsburg, when the town's newly minted nouveau-riche gentry needed a place to flaunt their status, the opulently spacious, Victorian-style Jadescale Hall had, through private donations and many renovations, stood the test of time.

Although the sun hadn't set that early evening, the sky had gotten darker due to the growing overcast. Yet, it hadn't dampened the spirits of the wealthy patrons who stepped out of their limousines, eager to display all of their finery in costume as they strolled past the gauntlets of spectating admirers of haute couture and local celebrity, and entered the stately facade of the building.

Invites were presented to the guards who stood at their kiosks by the doors, names were checked against those on their guest lists, and partiers were nodded into the depths of the hall with obsequious smiles that replied to the patrons' condescending ones.

In the quiet dark of one of the building's landscaped sides, a window sat open, with soft, smoking slags where sturdy, metal locks use to be.

In the marble tiled corridor where both men's and women's restrooms led into, the door to the men's room opened, emitting the low-registered sounds of angry male grumblings accompanying Marcie Fleach as she sheepishly exited.

"I said I was sorry," she apologized. "How was I to know that it was the men's room? They don't have signs hanging on the windows, y'know?"

Rather than staying by the bathroom door to elicit more consternation and call attention to herself, Marcie beat a hasty path out towards the carpeted main corridor that led further into the hall.

The occasional, wondering glances from the costumed guests met Marcie, as she tried to surreptitiously move among their number. She knew that her uninteresting attire made her completely stand out against these strutting splashes of color, and was only going to get worse when she entered the ballroom.

Ignoring the looks, she followed them and the grand, echoing music that she could hear floating from the wide second floor landing. She walked up one of the ornate, curving staircases and reached the ballroom doors. Without preamble, Marcie gulped, hoped for the best, and slipped inside.

The ballroom was immense and for a moment, Marcie thought that she had revisited the memory of her first time stepping into a planetarium. The vastness and the otherworldly awe that washed over her, came back in spades, only this time it wasn't the sheer majesty of science that stole her breath from her, but the spectacle of captured fantasy, of fairy tales read to and never visited...until now.

Gaudily dressed revelers mingled about long, bountiful buffet tables, taking their privileged ease, while others assigned themselves visible orbits of dance in various levels of managed rhythm out on the man-made plain of a dance floor. And above it all, the impossibly huge chandelier, a layered confectionery of brilliant crystal and light, blessing the beautiful people below with soft illumination.

In fact, the ballroom as so vast that it momentarily shook Marcie's confidence that she could find Blanchard before she was either discovered by, or reported to, a security guard, so she focused on the mission at hand.

From the buffet tables, Marcie could hear adults chatter over business affairs, business intrigue, intrigue and affairs, in general, and nodded in silent approval. These tables acted as watering holes for the social animals around her, so, feeling that they were her best source for information on Blanchard's whereabouts, she headed towards one of them.

Not wanting to create any social faux-pas that could get her ousted, Marcie's eyes scanned for any groups who were engaged in conversations, so as not to interrupt them. Then, she noticed a costumed businesswoman standing by a conversing duo, yet wasn't talking with them.

Deeming her safe to talk to, Marcie approached her.

"Excuse me, ma'am, but you wouldn't, by any chance, know where a Richard Blanchard would be?" Marcie asked from behind the woman, who turned to face the teen. "I'm, uh, his, uh, secretary's intern. I have to deliver these, uh, incriminating photos of his business rivals to him for his approval."

The woman studied Marcie's appearance, remembered the word "intern" spoken, and amicably made her mistaken assumption. "Intern, huh? Boy, they get younger and younger. Anyway, the last time I saw him, he went on the dance floor with his date. He'll be the one dressed as a musketeer."

Marcie looked out to where the businesswoman pointed at the dance area ahead. "The dance floor, huh? Thanks. I really appreciate it."

The woman held up a finger to stop Marcie from thanking her further. "Say no more. No rest for the weary."

Marcie stepped past the woman and headed out, but then heard her ask, "Hey, tell me. What are you supposed to be, anyway?"

"A typical American nerdy girl," Marcie answered, without missing a beat.

"Wow!" said the businesswoman, thoroughly impressed. "That is so life-like!"

"Thanks," Marcie deadpanned, marching farther and farther away from the table. Soon, she entered the cloud of dancers.

Marcie frowned. She wanted to look like someone searching for a dance partner, but she only succeeded in looking less and less conspicuous in the midst of this churning sea of waltzing bodies.

Marcie thought to give a cautious glance behind her. From her position, the doorway was behind her a good ways, and then, as if things weren't problematic enough, she glumly saw a security guard step inside the ballroom.

The questions popped up without her prompting. Did someone report her to him? Did she somehow give herself away? Was it just a routine patrol?

She shook the fearful thoughts from her mind. Whether he was here for her or not, she had to find Blanchard before she was nabbed.

Turning her head away from the approaching guard, she swung her focus back to scanning faces and started to fret. There were just too many people on the dance floor rhythmically moving in and out of her perception. Too many faces concealed by masks and thick face paint to tell who was who. She began to wish she had some facial recognition software in her jacket pocket, somewhere.

Remembering the guard, Marcie moved deeper into the crowd, more to hide, at the moment, than to keep searching for her quarry.

Then, from a distance, impossibly, she saw a figure dressed as a musketeer dancing with a woman. The build, the facial features struck such a chord of familiarity in her, that she quickly moved in the man's direction, but the target was still too far to call his attention.

Giving another glance behind her, Marcie's heart jumped when she saw the guard actually entering the dance area. Somehow, he  _was_  looking for her!

The guard moved calmly, naturally through the human obstacles before him, so as not to disrupt the proceedings, roving between dance couples like a shark searching through fields of seaweed for prey, and getting uncomfortably close to Marcie, who, she remembered, was still without a dance partner to hide behind.

Looking around frantically, Marcie's eyes widened with hope when a teenaged girl dressed like a French clown, crossed her path, walking alone towards the buffet table.

Quickly, Marcie moved in and swept the surprised teen into a twirling, clumsy approximation of a waltz, leading them both slowly in, possibly, Blanchard's general direction.

"Mind if I cut in?" Marcie asked with a nervous smile.

The girl, while not minding too much for the sudden dance, was, however, taken aback by the sudden appearance of her new dance partner. "Um, not really, but I was on my way to get something to eat."

"Me, too!" Marcie said, in nervous conversation, and perhaps a bit too loudly. "But, I figured, since we're both in the area, we might as well work up an appetite before going back there."

The girl gave a quizzical look regarding Marcie's reason, then moved on.

"Uh, okay. Grace," the girl introduced herself.

"Marcie," she returned the introduction, then looked around her surroundings as furtively as a rabbit under the hunter's eye. "Pleased to meet you."

Something Grace noticed easy enough. "Are you looking for someone?"

Marcie forced herself to look more natural as she thought of her next lie. "Um, just my date. He's dressed like a security guard. I came in with him and already he started flirting with Debbie from Consolidated Widgets just because she's a business major."

Sororal sympathy crossed Grace's face, but then, she released her hold on Marcie "Oh. Uh, sorry to her that, Marcie. Um, look, I'm really hungry, so I'm gonna take off."

Leaving Marcie to the waves of the human sea, Grace called out as she made a beeline to the tables, "Hope the rest of your night turns out better."

Marcie, watching the girl depart and then noticing how much closer she was to whom she hoped was Blanchard, said to herself, "I hope so, too."

Finding herself again with no partner, Marcie's mind drew a blank as to what to do covertly, and so she found herself self-consciously pantomiming having a dance partner and twirling between couples, getting closer and closer to Blanchard.

Finally, she got within shouting distance of the dancing couple and she couldn't help smiling at her luck when she saw that it actually was Richard Blanchard. She made up her mind to stick with him the whole night, if need be, so as not to lose him, when a hand slapped down on her shoulder and seized it.

She twisted in fright and saw the guard standing by her, victoriously.

"Pretty ambitious," said the man, smugly. "Crashing the biggest social event of the year."

Marcie gave a nervous giggle. "Aim high?"

"Well, time to crash and burn," he said as a rejoinder, then, increasing his grip on her shoulder, he guided her in the direction of where he came from, and moved her from the dance floor.

"Wait! You don't understand! You have to let me see Mr. Blanchard! This whole town's future could be decided by what you do in the next few seconds!" Marcie begged, watching her hope to save Gatorsburg moving as far away as she was from the CEO.

"It's a good thing I commute from Crystal Cove," the guard quipped, matter-of-factly. "Come on."

Marcie fretted from within. Who told on her? Personally, she wasn't much of a partier, due to the sheer paucity of times she ever was invited to one, and she wouldn't have had to crash one if she didn't feel the need. She just wished that she had more time to warn Blanchard.

They both approached the crowded buffet table and were on their way to passing it, when Grace, a full plate in her hand, happened to see the "couple" making their way out.

With the righteous pique of seeing a wronged sister-in-arms, Grace stepped in front of the two and whipped out a pointing, accusing finger at the guard.

"Is this the guy?" Grace asked Marcie. Marcie gave a nervous smile that Grace took as confirmation.

Fixing her gaze at the man, she said. "So, you not happy leaving your date high and dry for some other pretty face you see, like some caveman, but now you have to drag her off like one, too?"

The guard just stood where he was, thoroughly confused. "Huh?"

"See? You even sound like a caveman," Grace continued. 'You guys are all alike! Is this like, genetic or something?"

"What?" the guard asked.

Grace had heard enough scintillating conversation from the mistaken lothario. "You need to cool off, Romeo."

Reaching over to the nearby table, she grabbed a cup of punch and splashed it into his face.

The guard, knowing full well which end his bread was buttered, did nothing to retaliate, but failed to stop Marcie, who, seeing the opportunity this fracas presented, broke from his grip, and into a run back out onto the dance floor, hoping she could still find Blanchard in all of that movement.

"That's right, Marcie!" Grace cheered the departing girl. "Run free! There are plenty of other guys out there for you!"

"Mr. Blanchard!" Marcie called out in, what she hoped, was the area she last saw him in.

Just off in the distance, Blanchard turned his attention from his date when he heard his name rising faintly through the social murmurings. "What? Who's calling me?"

Startled people started parting from Marcie and the pursuing guard, giving the teen the clearing she needed to see a concerned Blanchard watching the proceeding up ahead.

"Get back here!" yelled the wet guard.

"Mr. Blanchard!" Marcie said, grateful to be within earshot and finally reach Blanchard.

"Marcie? How did you get here?" he asked.

Marcie managed to gasp, "No time!" before the guard reached out and caught by the shoulder again. Without another word, he began to drag her away once more, while the closest crowds of partiers watched, apprehensively.

"The town's in danger!" she managed to yell. "If we don't move fast, it's going to flood!"

Blanchard didn't understand what was going on, things were happening too fast and being too vague, but hearing that his hometown was in some kind of trouble galvanized him with sudden concern.

"Wait! Guard! Let her go," he commanded the guard. "I'll handle this."

The guard gave Blanchard a confused, almost pained look, as if one of the richest men in town was purposely impeding him from his duties. Then, he released his grip from her shoulder and turned to leave, allowing Marcie to walk back to Blanchard.

"What's this all about, Marcie?" Blanchard asked.

"I know what Pretre du Marais is doing in the mines after he scares your workers away," she explained. "He's sabotaging the tunnels under the lakes. Collapsing them."

That certainly seized the financial part of Blanchard's attention. "Are you sure?"

"I believe so, sir," Marcie said. "I'm telling you this, but you have to round up all of your competitors, if they're here, because this concerns them, too."

Inwardly, Blanchard hesitated. He almost wanted to withhold any information that might give him the sole competitive edge, but then he reminded himself of what Marcie had just said about Gatorsburg's possible plight and he had to admit that this might be bigger than everyone concerned.

"All right," Blanchard nodded.

They both walked over to the bandstand and Blanchard motioned to the bandleader for a microphone.

"Please excuse the interruption," Blanchard's voice reverberated in the ballroom. "This is Richard Blanchard, CEO of Blanchard Mines. Will all of my business competitors please meet me in front of the bandstand. This is highly important. Thank you."

Marcie stood grimly in thought. She hoped that she was right about all of this, as she began to see costumed men and women, in reality, captains of industry who were not to be trifled with, start appearing from the concerned crowds that stood near the bandstand. She was, unfortunately, already known by most as Hot Dog Water, she didn't need to be called Chicken Little, as well.

Soon, all of Blanchard's rivals stood before him and Marcie.

"What's going on, Blanchard?" a thinly built, pinched-faced, raven-haired businesswoman named Prudence asked with long-suffering patience.

"Is this some kind of game you're playing with this outsider, here?" an African-American businessman asked wearily.

One of the businessmen in the group leaned over and whispered to the others. "Maybe he finally going to confess to all of this alligator priest nonsense." From his closeness to her, Marcie could recognize him as Mr. Dennis, the rival she saw arguing with Blanchard when she walked in on them in his office earlier.

From there, it didn't take long for the situation to degenerate into a one-sided cacophony of accusations and snide questions thrown in Blanchard's direction. Blanchard, being no stranger to this behavior towards him, kept his composure and his held his tongue in an attempt to be diplomatic.

Marcie, and it seemed, the town, however, had no time for diplomacy. Frustrated at this time-wasting bickering, took the mic from Blanchard and whistled into it loud enough to rival the feedback it created and stopped the commotion.

When all attention suddenly turned to her, Marcie, then, assumed a more diplomatic tone. "Listen to me, you guys. I know that you're all rivals and you all want to be on top, but now's not the time for that."

"Why?" Prudence asked her. "Anytime's a good time to crush a competitor." She was soon heaped with the sounds of her fellows agreeing with her.

Marcie raised her hands for calm. "Hey, you're preaching to the choir when it comes to competition. I live for science fairs. All I'm saying is that, at least, for tonight, you forget about all that and help each other out, big time."

An attractive African-American businesswoman looked skeptical at Marcie. The pall of dire urgency settling about her was troubling. "Why? What's wrong?"

"I think that Pretre du Marais, whether he's real or some kook, has been sabotaging the tunnels in all of your mines for a while, now," Marcie told them.

"Okay. So what?" Dennis snorted, dismissively. "If that's true, then we'll have our engineers go through the tunnel systems and fix the problem. That's what we pay them to do, young lady."

Blanchard was suddenly taken aback by what he had heard. "Wait a minute, Dennis. If she's right about this, you haven't told your people to check the tunnels in all the time you've been accusing me?"

Dennis gave Blanchard a shrug and an infuriatingly self-satisfied smirk. "Unlike you, Richard, we aren't so blind as to not see opportunity when it arises. Okay, decided as a group to ignore the problems in our mines and instead, use them as an excuse to put enough pressure on you that you'd make a mistake and we'd capitalize on it."

"We are rivals, after all," the black businesswoman agreed.

Marcie had to lean against the front of the raised bandstand to rest from being exposed to such concentrated ruthlessness. "Man, I thought the science fair circuit was cutthroat. Look, you guys can deal with all of that later. Right now, I need all of you to get back to your mines and have them checked out. I talked with Miss McAfee from the government, and she told me that if enough of the tunnels are obstructed, and it rains-"

As if to punctuate what was to be said, she was interrupted by the explosion of a thunderclap that startled everyone, and lightning strobing by a tall window.

"Then the swamps outside of town will overflow and then Gatorsburg will flood," Marcie finished, hopeful that that suddenly divine intervention would help convince the businesspeople.

The rivals, finding their composure after the thunder stroke, huddled together to shield themselves from Blanchard's possible eavesdropping, and muttered amongst themselves.

Blanchard and Marcie couldn't make out the conversation, and didn't really care about it, but they were more hopeful when they started to notice pitched concern and anxiety in their tones. Then...

"Are you completely sure about this?" Dennis asked the two after the huddle broke.

Marcie stuck to her guns and said, with conviction, "I am. Go back and check your mines right now. If I'm wrong, all I'll have proved is that I'm just a stupid girl and you'll have more than enough PR ammo to make Mr. Blanchard look bad. It's a win-win."

"Hey!" Blanchard interjected, sounding hurt.

Marcie continued her pitch. "But if I'm right about all of this, then all of you, Mr. Blanchard, included, will come out as the heroes of Gatorsburg."

More uncertain grumblings began to rear from the group. Blanchard was ready for them, this time.

"Don't forget," he added, pedantically. "Grateful customers are well-paying customers."

"Basic Business 101," the skeptical group said in reverent unison.

Dennis glanced suspiciously at the duo, then he finally acquiesced. "All right, you two, we'll do it."

* * *

"I wish Mr. George was here," Marcie muttered to herself, finding herself back in the Tunnel Monitoring Station of Blanchard Mines' outlying admin building. "He certainly made all of this look easy."

Six available engineers, called at the last minute for this emergency, manned three of the group consoles that she had seen being operated once before, only now, due to being so suddenly short-handed, Blanchard volunteered Marcie to be the fourth operator, and so she found herself seated on one side of the, otherwise, empty, rear-most, tandemed station, fingers nervously stroking an completely unfamiliar joystick and staring at her assigned console's dark monitor.

She adjusted the headset the engineer who gave her a crash course in driller operations, had given her, more to calm her anxieties than to make sure her connection to Blanchard's teleconference network that he had set up in the main conference room back at the corporate headquarters downtown, was secured.

Marcie looked up at the wide-screen main monitor that once more displayed the four interior caves' lake tunnel networks and saw that there were x's flashing over the mouths of the tunnels therein, confirming what the data on the flash drive had told her.

She hoped that Blanchard's competitors' people were on the ball with finding their obstructions right away. If any caved-in tunnels were missed in their searches, it could give strength and speed to a flash flood that was just moments from unleashing itself on Gatorsburg.

The engineer who had instructed her, looked over at her station and said, "Turn on your station monitor."

Marcie, hearing the man, snapped out of her thoughts, fumbling and looking for the button that would activate the screen. After a few seconds, she found it and switched it on.

"Sorry, about that," Marcie demurred, as the 2-D lake graphic of her assigned cave materialized, showing the thin web of blue lines that indicated a water-filled tunnel network.

Marcie noticed a soft beeping sounding from her station, alerting her to not just one obstruction having been found in one of the tunnels, but a series of obstructions clogging up only the largest tunnels, some by their openings and others further along their lengths.

"That's alright, but get ready on your end," the engineer told her. "This is a worse-case scenario. We have to get those tunnels cleared out completely."

"You don't have to tell me twice," Marcie muttered in agreement, as her monitor showed her the underwater targets and the driller assigned to her, her only weapon to help save a town.

The engineer assigned as team leader gestured to his headset and spoke into the mic.

"Mr. Blanchard, all drillers have been placed in their lakes, the obstructions have detected and we are ready to clear them," he said.

From Marcie's, and indeed, all of the other headsets in the room, Blanchard's commanding voice was heard.

"Understood, Drill Team," he said. "I'm going to co-ordinate our drilling with the other companies' teams and their lake tunnels. Here's hoping they take this seriously."

* * *

Blanchard touched the control panel that was built into his section at the head of the conference table to make another selection, and screens descended from the surrounding walls of the darkening room, in front of him, giving him a impressive 90-degree view of his rivals' individual faces.

Blanchard glanced over at Dennis' screen. He had already pegged him as the ringleader of this recent, coordinated effort to eliminate him, and so spoke to him first.

"All right, Dennis. Are you and the others ready?" he asked.

"Yeah," Dennis snorted. "We've all been getting reports of obstructions in our lake tunnels. If it were just one company's mines, this wouldn't even rate as an emergency."

"That's why Marcie brought this to our attention," Blanchard said. "She said that  _all_  of our mines were compromised. It's the combined blockages that will cause the flooding, so get everyone ready to clear them out."

"Yeah, yeah," Dennis grumbled. "Who died and made you boss, anyway?"

Blanchard ignored the man and switched back to communicating with his team, and one other.

* * *

The white government van sat parked on the earthen path that wended a safe distance from the marshy banks of the seemingly fathomless Bellow Lake that dominated the center of the government protected expanse of wild wetlands called locally, and almost with veneration, the Source Swamps.

A clearing of the lake's marshy bank was populated by a couple of folding chairs, a table covered with notepads and waterproof laptops, and tools being manned by two figures clad in hooded rain slicks, who took to monitoring their water level measuring equipment that bobbed on the slightly choppy surface of the lake.

The chime of a cell phone rang and one of the two reached into a pocket and pulled out the device.

"Hello?" answered McAfee. "Ah, hello, Mr. Blanchard. Yes, we're in the middle of our measurements now, but we won't be able to give you our findings until later on. What? She did? Just like I feared. All right, I'll tell him. We'll start packing up now. Thank you, sir. Good-bye."

"Who was it?" Wharton asked, while she put her phone away.

"That was Mr. Blanchard. He just said that that girl Marcie found out that not only are his mines obstructed, but his competitors', too. They all working together to try and clear them before the rains really come down, but we have to get out of here or we might get caught in a flash flood."

"Works for me. All right, then. Let's get this stuff packed up," Wharton said, watching the leaden sky with fresh foreboding.

* * *

"Okay, everyone, begin drilling, and good luck," the team leader spoke up, even though everyone had heard the order already from their headsets.

Marcie nodded and placed her slim fingers on the joystick, moving it forward slightly. In response, she saw the digital representation of her driller move likewise. Understanding dawned on her, by taking what fleeting instruction her engineer guru had given her and looking on it as if playing a video game, the task didn't feel so daunting.

She aimed the driller at closest of the blocked tunnels and when it got close enough, a window of text popped up in the middle of her monitor prompting her to switch to external cameras.

Perusing over the cam functions panel to the side of the joystick, Marcie found the correct button and pressed it.

The monitor's digital iconography shrank to a still visible picture, but was shunted to a corner of the monitor, replaced by a high definition viewing of the murky waters ahead, lit by the driller's forward spotlights.

Marcie studied the driller icon on the now smaller digital map to steer it towards the tunnel, and on the real-time cam image, the driller's lights finally shined on the wall of collapsed earth ahead.

Using her thumb, she flicked up the hinged covering on the joystick's hat switch, and watched the water churn as the large drill bit spun with high revolutions and began to eat through the loose rock.

Watching the path the driller icon was making through the tunnel, Marcie kept a steady hand on controlling its progress, carefully threading and, eventually, clearing the passage.

A green checkmark appeared next to the tunnel that she tended to, which was notice not only by Marcie, but by her engineer mentor, as well.

"Good job, Marcie," the man praised. "You'll be a pro at this before long."

"Thanks," Marcie said, still a little nervous, yet proud of the accomplishment. But there was no time to celebrate, she knew, so, she went back to her joystick, backing the driller out to clear the next obstruction.

And so it went. Marcie and the other engineers silently focused on their work, as drillers tore into blockages, sometimes into multiple cave-ins in a single tunnel.

"What was that?" a startled engineer suddenly asked. She thought that she saw something move through the water, crossing her driller's path briefly.

"What? Did you see something?" the team leader asked her. "Did the cameras catch it?"

"Yeah," she said, touching her console's cam control panel. "I'll bring it up."

The main monitor expanded the four picture screen into a full single one, displaying the feed from her driller's cam. The engineer hit replay/slow, causing the image of a ghostly white bulk to gradually move across Marcie and the other engineers' view.

An alert cried from her console as the drifting icon of her driller suddenly turned red and then disappeared from her personal monitor.

"My driller!" she yelled. "Something took it out! It's gone!"

Her partner's face immediately looked stricken as he watched the same thing quickly happen to his driller, the moving icon burning red, and then nothing.

"Same thing happened to mine!" he said to all. "What's going on? Are we being sabotaged?"

The team leader motioned to his headset, preparing to make a call to his employer. "A good question. We better get to the bottom for this before we run out of drillers."

In the conference room, Blanchard listened to the gradual incoming reports from his rivals, and when they came, he proudly gave reports of his company's progress. It was all slow going, but with each tunnel cleared, he felt a rising sense of hope and satisfaction.

A light blinked on his communications panel, signaling an incoming call from his admin building. Pressing the corresponding button, he opened the channel.

"Blanchard, here."

"Mr. Blanchard," said his team leader. "We have a problem, sir."

* * *

The last of their equipment was finally carried and loaded into the back of the van just as the downpour came. As they ran to the front of the van, the rains pounded upon McAfee and Wharton with the force of a sudden attack and was proving to be unrelenting.

Both scientists jumped into the van, drenched. Sheets of rainwater rolled down the windshield and closed windows with such density that visibility out of them was near-impossible. The percussion of the deluge against the chassis of the van came in deafening, wind-borne surges.

"Let's get out of here," McAfee said as she reached for her cell phone. "I'll call Mr. Blanchard back and ask for a sitrep on the tunnels."

Wharton turned the key, revved the van into Drive and turned the windshield wipers on at full speed. He stomped on the accelerator and the vehicle lurched forward, then settled back into a disquieting stop.

Another tread on the gas pedal caused the van to shift and rock in its efforts to rise out of what had to be a deepening patch of muddy road.

"What's wrong?" asked the woman.

"We're stuck," Wharton told her. "If it wasn't raining so hard, I could get out try to find something to put under the tires, so we could dig out."

"So, you're saying that we're stuck," McAfee concluded, glumly.

"That's about the long and the short of it, yeah," he said, turning off the engine. "We'll just have to wait it out."

McAfee stared out of the soaked windshield, then began to dial up Blanchard. She stopped with grateful surprise before she tapped the last few numbers when she began to feel the inertia of slow, yet increasing forward acceleration.

"Hey, good job, Wharton," she praised him. "I thought we'd be stuck for good."

Wharton, looking more confused at the van's inexplicable motion than his partner's comment, explained, "Wasn't me. I turned the engine off, remember?"

A greatly distressing thought filled both of their minds. Both of them opened their doors wide enough to stick their heads out and looked down at the ground. Or rather, what they wished was the ground.

Deep water was rushing underneath the van, flowing with Herculean strength and purpose, as it gently floated and carried the vehicle along effortlessly.

They slammed their doors with a yelp of terror as the growing flash flood continued to wash pounds of loose debris and sediment, drowned animals, ordinarily heavy driftwood, and their helpless van in the direction of the forest that surrounded the wetlands.

And the path of least resistance, McAfee thought fearfully. Downhill to an oblivious Gatorsburg.

 


	9. Chapter 9

"What are you going on about now, Blanchard?" Dennis asked.

"My people are telling me that something's happening on my end, Dennis," Blanchard explained. "My drillers are not working."

"Is that right?" Dennis sneered. "Are you sure it just isn't simple incompetence on your end of things?"

Blanchard bristled through his waning patience. "Are you sure it isn't some corporate espionage on yours?"

Blanchard and Dennis stared hard at one another in the dark conference room, in what amounted to a game of will across the miles and years between them, silently broadcasting the unmistakable dislike they had for each other.

What are you saying?" Dennis finally said back. "That one of us has sabotaged your equipment?"

"Can you fault me for thinking so?"

"Well, we didn't do it," Dennis dismissed him. "How could we? We're busy doing our part to save Gatorsburg. Instead of blaming us for your little mechanical breakdowns, maybe you should deal with the problem."

And with that, Dennis, thoroughly tired of telling Blanchard how to run a business, turned off his screen, making the room a little darker around a brooding Blanchard.

Blanchard dismissed his rival and made himself focus on the problem at hand. He would be damned if it was his company that didn't pull its weight and caused millions of dollars of flood damage to his hometown.

He reached over, tapped his com panel and asked into it, "Team Leader, apart from Mine Two's drillers, have any more been destroyed?"

"Afraid so, sir," the voice issued from the table's built-in speakers. "A driller from Mine One. The engineer operating the second unit managed to shut it down before it was too late. Whatever was attacking them, just stopped at that point."

"Has anyone gotten a better look at what it is?"

"Not really, sir. Other than the fact that is looks white, we don't have a clue what it is."

"And the fact that seems to be hopping from one mine to the next," Blanchard surmised.

Marcie, who, like everyone in the station, had been listening to the conversation over her headset. Then, suddenly, she stood up from her console's chair like a shot.

"No way!" she squeaked in startled epiphany. "How did  _he_  get in there?"

Everyone turned to the outburst, but it was Blanchard, who heard the shout, who asked, "Marcie? Was that you? Have you figured out what's attacking us?"

"I think so, sir," she said, her recent memories being stirred up to a high degree. "Have you ever heard of...Ol' Whitey?"

"Ol' Whitey?" a engineer working from Console Two scoffed with a chuckle. "That old miners' myth? What about it?"

"I'm afraid it's no myth, Mr. Blanchard," Marcie implored the CEO. "I actually ran into him, myself, after Pretre du Marais tried to feed me to him. He lives in the deeper caves of Mine Four, but I think I know how he's getting around to smashing our drillers."

"How?"

"He must be using some other underwater tunnel system that your people don't know about, that connects to all of your caves' lakes, to hunt. That, at least, explains why he hasn't starved to death in all those years. He's probably hunting and the sound and movement of the drillers is like prey to him."

Blanchard mulled that over. Alligators were animals, after all, and over the many years that he served the company, he long had to acknowledge the biological component of the business, even if he didn't understand it fully. What Marcie postulated could be possible.

He trusted her this far, he decided. No sense in stopping this late in the game. "If that's true, then how do we get this gator out of the way so we can finish our work?" he asked her.

He couldn't see the relieved look on the teen's face, but did hear her say with urgent confidence, "I'm working on that now, sir."

"All right," Blanchard said, pleased to see that things were fighting to get back on track. "Get on it, and let me know what you propose."

"Yes, sir."

* * *

Despite the danger of being floated away by the floodwaters that were being born from the rising lake's levels and earth that was now overtaxed in trying to soak up the deluge, McAfee and Wharton knew that staying inside the van was their safest course of action, even as the van twirled and banged into every tree that the current flowed past.

"We're really earning our hazard pay, now," Wharton quipped after a serious bang from a tree against his driver's side door.

"Question is, whether we'll live long enough to collect it," said McAfee, rattled by an impact from her side of the van. It felt like being the guest of honor in a demolition derby.

If anything else was to be said, it was cut off, brutally, by the screech of crunched metal that heralded their sudden halt with a wrenching force so violent that almost threw the two of them into the windshield.

Instead, heads hit dashboards, stunning them for several moments.

McAfee managed to rouse herself before Wharton did, and groggily picked up her cell phone.

"Wharton," she called to him. "Wharton, wake up. I think we hit something. We've stopped moving."

"Feels like we ran aground on something," Wharton guessed, while clearing the cobwebs from his head. He felt that his guess was confirmed when he noticed that the van felt elevated, as if it rested on an incline. "I'll open the door and check."

He gripped the door handle and lifted. The door stayed closed. He worked the handle again and again, and the door remained shut, tightly so.

"Open your door, McAfee," Wharton told her, hoping that his door was simply jammed from too much earlier abuse.

She grabbed her handle and lifted. Her door stayed shut.

"What's happened to the doors?" she asked, her anxiety rising as fast as, she knew, the waters outside were getting.

She rolled down her window and was greeted by a disquieting sight. A tree trunk filled her view, as it was pressed tight against her door and its window frame.

"Uh-oh!" she grumbled, as Wharton followed suit and saw, to his deep dismay, a similar tree wedged against his door, as well.

At the moment, if anyone had been outside, that person would have seen the white van effectively pinned between two wide, stout trees, its front end lifted high, as it was forced into the bosky vice by the force of the steadily rising torrent.

Wharton brightened with a thought. "We'll get out through the back doors. C'mon."

Freeing himself from his seatbelt, he turned in his seat to get ready to ease into the rear, when he saw something that halted him in mid-motion.

The squeezing action of being wedged between the trees caused the chassis to deform inwardly along the van's sides, popping the rear doors open. That wouldn't have alarmed the man, however, the fact that floodwater was now rushing in, and more distressingly, was filing the interior fast, confirmed how much water was raging outside and how swiftly it was moving out of the wetlands.

A fact that certainly impressed upon McAfee to make a panicked phone call to Blanchard to warn him of the situation, before it was too late.

"Mr. Blanchard," McAfee said into the phone, trying to keep the fear from rising in time with the water level, "we've got some bad news."

* * *

An engineer from the console that monitored Mine Three, yelped, "Whatever it is, it just knocked out my driller!"

"Understood," Marcie said, moving her driller away from the established tunnel network on her screen. "I'm using my driller to try and look for any unmarked tunnels Ol' Whitey's might use to hit this lake, next."

With experimental pulls of her joystick, her driller headed further into the deeper, darker zones of the lake, looking for a clue, for confirmation to her hunch while the mammoth gator was busy elsewhere. Even with the driller's spotlights on full beam in the murk, it was frustrating work.

Then the sweeping driller's spotlights moved across a patch of darkness against a far bank, a patch that had a tantalizing sense of depth in it. Marcie held the driller on that area.

"Hey! There!" she alerted everyone. "Is that a new tunnel down there?" Then, she brought the image up to the main monitor.

Another engineer, studying the image, confirmed her acquisition. "I guess we  _did_  miss that one. It's down there pretty deep."

Before anyone else could share any more insight on it, everyone's headset rang with the grim and urgent voice of the company's CEO.

"I've just gotten a call from those two government workers, McAfee and Wharton," Blanchard reported. "The flash flooding has started and they couldn't get out of the swamps in time. The other companies have reported that they've cleared their tunnels, but they must not be draining the floodwater into the caves fast enough. We're the only one that hasn't finished yet. Get that gator, or whatever it is, out of our way and finish clearing the tunnels, right now!"

The impact of the news about the flood hit them as hard as Blanchard's hardening, commanding voice. Everyone responded accordingly.

"Yes, sir!" Marcie and the other engineers called out, as if soldiers receiving their orders.

The team leader walked over towards Marcie's console and addressed her, directly. "You heard the man. What do we do?"

"We have to lure Ol' Whitey down that tunnel and keep him there," Marcie said.

An engineer, overhearing, chimed in with a incredulous question. "And just how is anyone gonna do that  _without_  becoming gator chow?"

With that question, Marcie had to slow down for a minute. Thinking fast was a virtue worth cultivating, she knew, but too fast, and she could miss something, things could run out of control. As she was fearing it was happening now.

She scowled at her monitor screen in thought. Superimposed in a low corner, was a small menu of commands for her drillers. The unfamiliarity of one command caught her attention.

"What's that?" Marcie asked the team leader, thoughtfully, pointing to the word.

He looked over her shoulder to the command text. "AutoMode? We set the drillers to that when we find a new tunnel. It'll normally explore the length of the tunnel, automatically, to see where it ends up. But we don't have time for that."

Marcie's mind latched onto the word  _automatically_ , and suddenly brightened at the hope that this unknown function presented.

"Yes, we do!" she cried out, jumping to her feet again. "It's perfect!"

Marcie left her post, turned for the doorway and spoke to the team leader from over her shoulder. "Set aside one of those drillers in Mine Three. I'll be there in a few minutes. I have an idea!"

Before the team leader could ask what it was, she had already run off.

* * *

Coming out of the rain and standing by the bank of Mine Four's lake, with a small can in her hand, a slightly damp Marcie wondered if it was due to some weird form of providence that she always found herself there. The fact that she was beginning to remember details of the defunct mine by sheer dint of being there so many times, slightly depressed her.

She stared impatiently at the dark water, expecting movement, but the surface was still.

"Where's the driller?" Marcie asked into her headset.

The voice of the team leader came through. "It's coming."

A trail of bubbles and disturbance caught her attention, and Marcie could finally see the driller quietly break the surface and rolled up to the bank, where it stopped by her feet.

Blanchard's voice came in next. "What's this all about?" he asked her. "What are you going to do?"

Marcie knelt before the driller, and with the edge of a screwdriver, opened the can. Then, she opened the small storage compartment in the back of the driller and proceeded to pour the fluid into it.

"Give Ol' Whitey something else to chase," Marcie answered, closing the compartment. "I just poured a whole can of gator lure into the driller. Okay, Team Leader, this driller's now called Decoy One. Send it to the new tunnel and switch it to AutoMode. Ol' Whitey should follow it."

"All right," the leader said. "Sending the driller down, now."

Like a remote-controlled toy, the driller turned and trundled back into the lake. Soon after, its built-in ballast tanks filled with water and it descended, trailing a chemical slick down into the depths.

"Okay, get back to the station, so we can finish clearing the rest of the tunnels," the team leader ordered her.

"Got it," Marcie said, happy to leave and get back into the warm administration building, and into the business of saving lives, hopefully starting with McAfee and Wharton's.

* * *

The team leader regarded Marcie once he saw her rush back into the TMS. "Marcie, you're back. Good news. Decoy One's rear camera just caught sight of that white alligator following it as it entered the new tunnel. I think it's working."

"Thank goodness," she sighed. "How's the drilling going, now?"

"We've got technicians putting replacement drillers in the lakes that Ol' Whitey hit. We're getting back on track."

An geologist spoke up from his station. "The other mines are clear of obstruction except Mine Four. Crap!"

"What's wrong?" the team leader asked, but one look from the scientist's face gave him a strong clue.

"Landslide! It must have been from all the vibrations from all our drilling! It covered the mouths of all of Mine Four's tunnels."

Now his face matched the geologist's. "No! We were so close! If we had more time, we could dig those tunnels clear, but now...it's hopeless."

Helpless silence reigned in the room for long moments, and then Marcie stiffened in thought and exclaimed, "Wait! There may be one shot."

"What do you mean?" the team leader asked. So far, the teen wasn't wasting his time with her presence, but these unwelcome, last-minute surprises were beginning to fray the edges of his sense of professionalism.

"We're gonna take a page from the Pretre du Marais Book of Underwater Sabotage," she said as she prepared to bolt from her station, yet again. "Tell your techs to gather all of the drillers from the other mines and grab some of that EXP-9, then meet me back at Mine Four's lake. If we work together on this, we can still clear the way."

* * *

McAfee hoped, as the water level inside the van rose to touch the back of the front seats and threatened to creep past and flood the front of the vehicle, that their open windows might mitigate some of the deadly water by causing it to flow out.

Unfortunately, the trees that kept the doors pinned closed were also wide enough that they effectively blocked the window openings and looked like they were equally good at keep most of the water in.

Wharton was forced to stay in his seat, but was still determined to get his partner and himself free by ineffectually kicking at the windshield, an action made harder by the awkward positioning in the driver's seat he had to endure.

With the window refusing to break, McAfee quipped glumly, "Built to last, huh?"

Wharton, seeing the momentary futility of his enterprise, took a break and slumped back in his now wet seat.

"I'm closer to breaking my ankle on this thing," he told her. "Sorry."

She glanced at her partner and could see the fear and frustration through his weary face. He was a good man, a fine scientist and a dear friend, more for his trying to save them, than his success at it.

"It's all right," she comforted him. Then, with a reflexive jump, she frowned, as cold lake water began to wet her hips. The water level was now entering the front, and there was nothing to be done about it.

* * *

"This is risky, Marcie, even under good conditions," the team leader grumbled. "This could cause another landslide even bigger that this one."

"I can't argue with that, but if I'm right, this could clear it all in one go. That's why we're gonna let the geologists make the placements themselves. They're the best people for the job."

By the stony bank of the lake, technicians were kneeling before recovered drillers, opening storage compartments and carefully placing small charges of EXP-9 explosive and radio detonators into them.

Once hatches were closed and secured, a technician stood and said to the team leader, "The drillers are ready to go."

"Thank you, everyone," he said to them, then gestured to his headset. "Drill team, you all know what you have to do. The geologists will insert the drillers into the best places needed to clear the most debris. When they're done with placement, the engineers will activate the charges. Hopefully, this will remove the landslide and clear the tunnels at the same time. Understood?"

He heard affirmatives on his end, then switched off.

"I hope this works," he grumbled under his breath as he and Marcie left the mine.

"You and me, both," she agreed.

When the two returned to the TMS, they could see on the main monitor a humbling sight. An x, far larger than any they had seen had been blinking and marked the location of the landslide. Individual console monitors had been switched to driller camera feeds to give the geologists working, the best view for placement.

Standing by a wall control panel, the team leader, pressed a button, and the view of the main monitor switched to a live camera feed, as well.

From there, he and Marcie could see the drillers head for the landslide's base, where the weighty concentration of rocks acted as a foundation, holding up the rest of the debris against the aquatic cliff wall and the tunnel mouths.

Without fanfare, the geologists drove the drillers head-first into the base, watching as their drill bits ate their way deep into the foundation, and then, eventually, stop.

"Drillers are now at optimum depth and placement," said one of the geologists to the team leader.

The leader nodded. "Good. All right, engineers, when you're ready."

On the engineers' side of the console sat a small box with a single red button in its center. All of the engineers opened the clear lid of the devices and hovered their collective fingers over the button, ready for a synchronized press.

"Blow it!" the team leader commanded.

With a unified press, the drillers within the base exploded, breaking up and scattering the foundation with a cloudy, violent detonation.

As the base disintegrated and became the start of a new layer of sediment, its strength was lost and the avalanche it held up began to loosely cascade down the length of the cliff face.

With the debris now sliding away, the building water pressure deep within the tunnels, suddenly blasted the new obstructions free from their mouths. Gallons upon gallons of Bellow Lake water began surging in a bubbling torrent, helping to clear away the remains of the landslide, and slowly, but surely, raise the level of the mine's lake.

As one, the entire TMS room gave a mighty and heartfelt cheer. Success, truly, was theirs this day.

Indeed, the remaining three mine's lakes were experiencing similar rises in water level, as the caves began to reenact the flash flooding being suffered by the Source Swamps, and the mining staff couldn't have been happier.

* * *

Inside the van, the flood had risen to the dashboard and a watery death lapped at Wharton's neck and McAfee's jaw line.

As she feared, the trees were wide enough to keep enough of the water inside to kill them, as McAfee, being the shorter of the two, fought to keep her head above the water.

"A flash flood," she groused, coughing up a mouthful of lake water. "We're gonna buy it in a flash flood."

"What? Was there any other way that you'd like to check out?" Wharton asked, wondering why she would be worried about the hows of her death. Dead was dead, regardless of reason.

Then, he saw her once stricken face soften somewhat as she seemed to look for some inner courage to say what was truly concerning her.

"I thought...that if things were different, we could..." she managed to say without half-drowning. With Wharton understanding and placing his hand comfortingly on her wet cheek, McAfee knew she needn't say anymore.

By the lake, however, something was happening.

Along the sides of the lake, water began to churn, and then suddenly, great plumes of white, frothy water began to fountain high in pressure-relieved blasts. Like hundreds of drains being unclogged at once, this was the glorious signal that, at last, the tunnels were cleared.

McAfee's heart pounded in grim anticipation to her demise, as the water reached her lips. And then, after a minute, it didn't rise any further.

The level started to descend to her chin, then to her collarbone, her midsection, and, surprisingly, to her hips, again.

She looked at Wharton, who was also sporting wet clothes, yet was now only sitting on top of the receding water level, and yelled ecstatically, "They did it!"

"They sure did," he breathed relievedly. "I was beginning to think-"

Before he could finish his comment, he felt McAfee snake her arms around his neck and shoulder, before she leaned across the driver's seat and gave him a passionate kiss.

Life and love, he thought, two of the most beautiful words in the English language, as he return the passion of the kiss back to her.

As the waters gradually emptied from the rear of the van and began to fall back to the depths of Bellow Lake, Wharton added two more to his list of beautiful words in the English language.

Hillary McAfee.

 


	10. Chapter 10

The storm had passed over the whole of Gatorsburg, unveiling a night sky that obscured some of its jewel-like stars with its cloudy remains.

Citizens and tourists who partied under the cover of shelter, and proprietors of every shop who gained from the partiers' patronage, were blissfully unaware of how close disaster had walked beside them all.

It was unusually dark along the length and breadth of the Middle Quarter's old money edges. Some of its occupied mansions were out of power, knocked out by the tempest, and if one were taking a walk along its streets, they would have seen the occasional spectral glow of moving flashlights or candles by its gothic windows.

One abandoned Southern-style mansion, in particular, had been dark and lonely for some years, and in the gloom of the neighborhood, had looked even more sepulchral and resembled nothing less than the archetypical haunted house.

Its melancholy appearance, especially at night, had given it a reputation around the neighborhood as a place of residence one shouldn't consider residing. Rumors among the neighbors of murders, human sacrifice, or cult worship going on behind its broad doors lent it a macabre mystique.

To the figure who kept vigil from one of the shadowy bedrooms within, he was content with that, for such tales tended to keep the curious at bay.

The glow of green eyes reflected from the bedroom window as Pretre du Marais stepped closer to it, in order to peer out and marvel at his personal triumph down below.

The iron silence of the dusty, old room was fitting to him, he needed no fanfare to savor it, to meditate on it, to absorb it.

The storm was provincial, he knew. Anything to keep the authorities busy or distracted. All of his hard work in indirectly sabotaging the local alligator-based small businesses with his attacks on Big Gator's mines were going to bear even more fruit in the weeks ahead. Demand would soon rise for the creatures, but for now, he was satisfied standing on the evidence of his most recent reward.

From the darkness behind him, a small object was tossed to clatter by his feet.

"Did I disturb you?" Marcie's voice asked from the shadows by the bedroom doorway.

Pretre du Marais quietly knelt down, picked up the flash drive, and then glanced burning green eyes over his shoulder at her.

"You are trespassing," he calmly commented. "I see that you've brought my flash drive back to me. That iz good. I would hate to think that Monsieur George would be punished due to your insolence."

"I trust that he's okay, then?" she asked.

"He is safe and sound. Hopefully, for you, the drive iz alzo?"

"Of course. I'm a girl of my word."

"Of course. Then, follow me, mon petite," the urban legend bade her as he moved towards her.

"Why on earth would I do that...Mr. George?

The figure froze in the dark.

"You think you've figured it all out, hmm?" asked George's voice, quietly, from behind the skull mask.

"I think so, yeah. Does the words Hallucinogenic Enemy Neutralization Grenade mean anything to you? Just your lucky day that you found a cache of them in the caves. All you had to do was just take them apart and use the powdered, chemical payloads inside. Your big plan to wreck Big Gator is finished. All of the companies worked together to fix the damage you did to them."

"And no doubt your meddlesome actions brought that about."

"I might have had something to do with that. Oh, and sorry about the locks in your front door."

"I wouldn't worry. It's just one more thing that I'll make you pay for tonight. But I am impressed that you tracked me here. So, I guess the obvious question is...how did you know? It was the flash drive, wasn't it?

Marcie nodded. "Got it in one, Mr. George. When I was in your office, I took some of your business cards, on a hunch that I might find some clue as to where you might be. Later, when I checked out the flash drive, I saw a folder named "Desmond." I opened it and found a map of this neighborhood with a mansion marked in red."

She reached into her jacket and pulled out a dog-eared business card for George to see. "I didn't know who Desmond was, until I remembered finding this business card in your office. Desmond Realty. I called them and asked them about the property at the address on the map, and they told me that you had recently bought it. A pretty steep investment, especially on a geologist's pay, but that  _pond_  out there, that sits on the property...that somehow clinched the deal, huh?"

George shrugged in the gloom. "Well, it's not every day you find an undiscovered tunnel system leading all the way from the Source Swamps to here."

"I figured as much," Marcie said with a nod. "As a geologist, you must have discovered this new tunnel and kept it secret, then used the legend of Pretre du Marais and the powder from the grenades to spread fear around town to distract everyone, and, more importantly, to scare all of the miners from their mines, so you could sabotage the tunnels with the explosive you stole from Blanchard Mines. As for all of the other companies' tunnel systems that you stored on your flash drive, you probably got them by scaring the information outta those company geologists who had access to that knowledge."

"Of course," the criminal confirmed. "All of those mines would be useless and the only way anybody could get any alligators would be from my pond, and I'd make a fortune.

Despite the darkness, Marcie tensed as she made out George's near-silhouette casually sidle slowly in her direction. One of her legs moved silently back for the attack she knew was coming.

George sighed in an effort to sound more conversational. "I turned my office inside-out, looking for that drive. Then, I figured that it must have fallen out of my pocket when we ran into each other in the mines, and you might have found it. So, I made it look like Pretre du Marais trashed the place and kidnapped me. By leaving one of his feathers on the floor and writing that message on the wall, I figured you'd see it and want to work a trade."

Marcie nodded. "I would have. Except, you never told me where you wanted to meet for the exchange.

That oversight caused a burst of sorrowful chuckles from George. "You know, you're right. I couldn't believe it, myself. I was in such a hurry that I  _did_  forget. Anyway, it was a pretty good scheme, I think, and to prove how much I believed in it, I sunk just about everything I owned to buy this property. But it'll pay off very well, very soon. As for you trying to stop me, well it's just you and me who knows what I've done. Which means, it's just going to be me, after I get rid of you."

Marcie frowned to herself. It wouldn't be long, now.

"So, what should I do with you, hmm?" he asked coolly as he approached her. "Bash your clever, little brains out with my staff or give you a concentrated dose of the fear powder and then drag you out into the middle of my pond? Hard to swim when you're terrified, but I think it'll be a toss-up to see what kills you first, drowning or your heart simply giving out from the terror."

Close enough, she thought.

With a drawing twist, Marcie flung a Discourager at him, then leapt out of the bedroom, one of her hands snagging the doorknob and closed the door on him with a slam.

A moment later, the door was thrown open and George stepped out of the room, his mask firmly around his face. Movement at the head of the staircase alerted him to Marcie's flight.

Marcie noticed him and in her fear, she pitched another Discourager on the worn, wooden floor by his feet. Laughter was his response.

"I've been using fear powder for some time, now, Miss Fleach," he gloated in his approach. "You don't think I wouldn't protect myself with a mask that didn't have a gas filtration system built in?"

With that, he charged at her. Marcie wasted no more time and scrambled down the stairs.

Knowing that he would overtake her in moments due to his proximity from the staircase, Marcie grabbed an Insta-Ice capsule and whipped onto the trailing steps. Her ploy worked in that she could hear George slip and curse on the spreading ice, but then she realized the folly of her reactionary defense when she felt the full weight of the man collide into her, and they both tumbled roughly down the stairs.

They hit the landing on the first floor in a heap, but before Marcie could recover and resume her escape, George twisted quickly and straddled her, one hand moving to his powder flask so he could dose her.

Pinned, her eyes widened worryingly as the man's fingers deftly opened the flask with a practiced, one-handed gestured, and she instinctively thought of trying another capsule, then rejected it, remembering what he said about his mask.

Marcie's mind screamed to her that she had to get up and run, but that wouldn't be possible as long as George was on top of her. She could see that in her mind. And then, she saw a desperate solution.

George was sitting on her stomach, but her kicking legs were surprisingly free. He almost stopped in confusion when Marcie suddenly grabbed his arms for balance, brought her knees up, and then rammed a knobby one right into the side of his back.

His body straightened in pain, and in that moment, Marcie reflexively caught the flask as it fell from his hand. She then squirmed herself out from under him as he recovered his wits.

She stood and prepared to go into a dead run, when she saw George beginning to stand. Remembering the flask in her trembling hand, she acted.

Reaching out, Marcie grabbed his cranial mask in an attempt to unmask, and instead, twisted it to the side, exposing his livid face. She then lifted the flask and then threw it at him.

The container opened in a trailing cloud of green, spreading the powder all over him, and in his panic, he accidentally breathed in.

His mind tried to calm down in defense of the poisoning, but in all the time that he used the chemical, he never realized just how fast it acted in the bloodstream, until now, and in so large and uncontrolled a dose.

His heart began to dance in terror and he couldn't decide what gripped him in that terror more. The sheer, raw action of the chemical or the knowledge that the exposure might make him so horror-struck that he wouldn't act rationally enough to escape. In moments, it didn't matter.

Watching him stand unsteadily to his feet, Marcie jumped upon hearing George wail, then moved out of his way as he ran screaming out of the front door.

A pang of guilt held her just then. She only wanted to stop him from coming after her, not scare him to death. Concerned, Marcie chased after him, hoping to catch up with him and calm him down.

Outside, George saw the night in fear and a small part of his subconscious was almost fascinated with the novel sensation. Then, all of his attention was taken by the sudden approach of headlamps.

A dark, long car stopped just feet from him, but the near hit was enough to frighten him into a backwards stumble and a headlong run from the vehicle.

Adrenaline-blurred vision failed to alert him to the edge of the pond, and he splashed into it in a mindless charge, just as Marcie ran from the front of the mansion and tracked him there.

Cool water washed the powder from George's sweaty skin, clearing his mind, gradually. As he began to grab hold of his fear by degrees, he noticed a trail of bubbles rising beside him. A driller had surfaced.

Marcie had noticed it, too, but neither had thought to notice a pair of reptilian eyes rise quietly from the depths.

Before either had a chance to wonder why a driller had suddenly showed up in the middle of the pond, in the middle of the night, their collective attention was shattered by the sight and sound of a huge splash of something even larger breaking the surface of the water.

A white, mountainous blur of scale, muscle and teeth explosively breached in front of George, and he couldn't hear Marcie's cry of concern above his own scream, as he, in a whirlwind of savage, hungry motion, was dragged into the frothing water.

Marcie, watching it all, was struck with silent, wide-eyed shock at the brutal swiftness of Ol' Whitey's attack, yet the analytical part of her brain realized that the tunnel that the Blanchard drill team led the gator through must have connected, ultimately and unfortunately, to George's pond.

Moments later, she lowered her gaze at some motion by the pond's edge. The only things remaining from the hunt were George's skull mask and a few lightweight components from a alligator tail-crushed driller that bobbed in the calming waves.

The sound of a car door closing made Marcie turn to it. A chauffeur approached her solemnly.

"Mr. and Miss Blanchard would like a word with you, Miss Fleach," he told her.

Marcie followed the driver back to the limousine with an almost detached state of mind. She just witnessed the death of a criminal, now she had to switch mental tracks just so she could talk to two of his victims.

She reached the car and could see Mr. Blanchard and his mother seated in the cavernous backseat.

"Hello, there, Marcie," Richard announced.

"What are you guys doing here?" Marcie asked. "I thought you were the police. I called them earlier to catch George when I figured out it was him that attacked your company."

"We followed you after you left the mines," he explained. "It looked like you knew where Pretre du Marais was, although, I must admit, we had no idea it was George."

"Besides," his mother added in. "The chief of police is a good friend of ours. We told him to let us handle this matter ourselves."

_Handle the matter themselves?_ They controlled the police, she thought, and Marcie finally had an inkling of what kind of power Big Gator had in this town. She kept silent.

"From where we parked, we could see what happened to Mr. George," said Miss Blanchard, matter-of-factly. "Since he damaged ours and our competitors' mines, endangering a significant number of tunnels and, therefore, decreasing their gator output, I don't see why Blanchard Mines won't see a profit by easily buying up this property and seizing control of the pond and its virgin tunnel system from our former geologist."

"In fact," she continued with a dark, cool rationale that matched the night. "I think we all owe a debt of thanks to Mr. George. His reckless greed has created an even greater demand for alligators, now."

Marcie wondered just then who was the bigger predator that night. Ol' Whitey or Miss Blanchard.

Pity for the wayward geologist caused Marcie to reason to the businesswoman. "Maybe, but jail would've been better for him than...that." She reflexively glanced back at the dark pond.

"Oh, dear," Miss Blanchard soothed. "Don't think like that, Miss Fleach. After all, it's just business."

Marcie couldn't think of a counter-argument to that statement as the tinted, rear passenger window on her side of the car began to ascend.

Then, it stopped, allowing Miss Blanchard a parting word. "Oh, did I remember to thank you for saving my granddaughter's life?"

The tinted window then sealed up and Marcie could see the dismay in her face's reflection, before the midnight black limousine drove smoothly away...

* * *

The Fleach Family sedan drove past the Gatorsburg Gas Station on its way out of town.

Marcie thoughtfully looked out from the open front passenger window, thinking about how the night went down, as the familiar California pines were starting to come into sight.

The energy of the Pageant of Gators had ebbed to a official end. Soon, it would be another fond memory, but to her, it felt like the longest week she ever endured. She was all for the wonders and mysteries of biology, but she swore to herself that if she saw another alligator in her life, it would have been far too soon.

"Did you have a good time in Gatorsburg, Marcie?" her father asked.

His voice brought her from her thoughts. "Huh? Oh, yeah, Dad. Did you learn anything from the trip besides Miss Greta's phone number?"

She ignored the red creeping along Winslow's thin cheeks as he explained himself.

"Ahem...She was just being a good hostess," he said. "As a fellow businessman, I can appreciate the level of courtesy she gives to all of her patrons. Speaking of businessmen, I received a letter from that fellow who wanted to buy my park."

The recollection leapt at her. "Mr. Greenman?"

"The very same. He asked if we could join him for dinner once we come back from vacation. Probably wants to sweeten the original deal he gave me with more money. Ha! Like that'll ever sway me. Besides, I plan on leaving it with you, someday."

Whatever plans Winslow had for his daughter was lost under a cursory question that popped up in her mind.

"How did he even know we were outta town?" she asked.

"He's super rich. Who knows? Maybe he has correspondents who tell him these kind of things," Winslow shrugged as they finally passed the road sign that bade them farewell from quaint, if strange, Gatorsburg.

* * *

The dinning room was an opulent, dark affair. Everywhere, candle-lit, beautifully cared-for wooden furniture and accouterments gave the room an air of natural power.

Servants silently moved in and out of the dinning room, offering plates and refilling crystal glasses on the lengthy dinner table. Winslow took the time to stop eating and notice the china and the even the tablecloth.

Must cost more than what I make in a year, he mused. Maybe I should take his offer more into consideration.

"Enjoying the meal so far?" their host asked from his end of the table. He then regarded Marcie. "I know about your problems with gluten products, Miss Fleach, and planned ahead."

Marcie nodded in appreciation. "Thank you, Mr. Greenman."

Greenman raised his hand, with a smile, to stop her gratitude. "Not at all. Just being a good host." He looked to Winslow. "I want to thank you again for letting me invite both you and your daughter over to talk."

Winslow wiped his mouth with a soft, cotton napkin and spoke. "Well, I understand why you want to talk to me. My amusement park. But why invite Marcie?"

"Fleach's Folly Factory is a family-owned and operated business," Greenman told him. "Since your daughter has helped you with that business, I'm sure you'll agree that she has proven herself to you enough that she should, at least, know about what I'm proposing for your company."

Marcie hadn't thought of that when she came along with her father to Greenman's residence. She had thought it odd, herself, that she would be invited to what amounted to another business affair. But now, after hearing the man's glowing assessment of her, she had to admit to being charmed by him. Few would give her such praise.

Winslow gave a thoughtful nod at Greenman's perception and wisdom and spoke. "I guess you're right, Mr. Greenman. I want you to know that I really love running the park. I guess you could say that it our family's strongest tie. Our identity, sort of."

"As a matter of fact," Marcie added. "Dad's been talking to me about running the place when he retires."

"Well,  _if_  I retire," Winslow jumped in, suddenly feeling old and less in charge of the business proceedings.

"Yeah, but I don't know if that ever happen," Marcie said, then amended, "Him retiring, not me taking over."

Winslow gave a look to Marcie that, to her, looked both troubled and familiar. "But, Marcie, you have to think about your future. You'll be going to college soon and, as strange as it is to hear, I won't be around forever. You should give it more thought."

Marcie gave a slight sulk over her plate of food. "I give it thought," she muttered under her breath. "I wish you'd give what  _I_  say some more thought."

"Hmm?" her father asked, unable to catch what she said to her plate.

"Nothing," she muttered again.

"Exactly!" Greenman exclaimed in Marcie's direction, either not noticing the family spat or choosing to ignore it. "I'm probably wasting my time, and more importantly, your father's, yet again by making another deal to buy his park, but it's only because I didn't understand how passionate Mr. Fleach was about it, until now. You really should consider taking over, especially if I can't persuade him to sell."

"Quite right," Winslow concurred. Then he passed out into his casserole.

Marcie gave a slight, embarrassed cough. "Sorry, sir. My dad never could hold his liquor."

Greenman waved it away with an understanding smile. "Not to worry. My chauffeur will drive you both home after dinner. But tell me, how long have you been working with your father?"

"Since I was twelve. My mom left us, so I guess it was a way for the both of us to cope with it. I helped him sell food and candy from the concession stands, at first. Then I would just work around the park, inspecting the rides when Dad was too cheap to hire an inspector."

Marcie gasped when she realized what she said. How did that happen? She didn't even think of it. It just came out.

"I-I mean...Anyway, I loved the rides and sounds of the people enjoying themselves. And at night, when the lights would come on, the park would look so..."

"Magical?" Greenman finished.

"Yeah," said Marcie, a wistful sadness coloring her mood. "But I guess when you get older..."

"The Ferris wheel can't take you high enough," Greenman finished for her again, and this time, Marcie could hear a melancholy tint the man's voice, as well. "Yes, I know. Before I lost my father, I enjoyed time with him, as well, and, like you, I suppose I learned that as I got older, life could lead you down a different path. Sometimes one you would gladly tread, and sometimes one where you're dragged, kicking and screaming."

A silence as heavy as the antique woods of the room hung over the diners.

"I'm sorry," Greenman said to her. "I've brought this dinner crashing down with sad nostalgia."

"That's alright, Mr. Greenman," Marcie said in a low voice, waving the moment away.

"Would you like some more fruit juice?" he asked, as a way to smooth things over.

Marcie took a look at the half-full crystal glass in her hand.

She was about to politely decline when the words to do so flowed from her mouth like molasses exposed to the dead of winter.

"No...thhh..." she slurred.

Her brain rebelled her body. The glass, now barely in focus, slipped from her fingers, to spill the drugged juice into the expensive carpet. She wanted to ask why it was suddenly so hard to gather her thoughts, but even the thought to ask  _that_  dissolved in her oncoming stupor.

"Dessert, Miss Fleach?" he asked, innocently.

"Wha..." was all she could manage before she followed her father's stead and  _her_  face crashed into her casserole.

Greenman stood up from his side of the table and strolled over to where Marcie snored softly into her dinner and looked over her with satisfaction. From his dinner jacket, he pulled out a microcassette recorder and hefted it playfully.

" _Wha_ , indeed, Miss Fleach."

 


End file.
